


We Will Light Our Way With Our Lanterns On

by FourthFloorWrites



Category: The Transformers (IDW Generation One), Transformers - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Developing Relationship, Fix-It, M/M, Mildly Dubious Consent, Multi, Transformers Plug and Play Sexual Interfacing, alternate events for Drift: Empire of Stone, diverges from Transformers #38 and MTMTE #40, the plot device of combination
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-05-25
Updated: 2020-05-27
Packaged: 2021-03-02 21:33:52
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 20,421
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24373600
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FourthFloorWrites/pseuds/FourthFloorWrites
Summary: A split-second calculation sets the Enigma of Combination on a path to theLost Light.Revised and re-uploaded asFault Lines Under the Living Room.
Relationships: Drift | Deadlock/Ratchet/Rodimus | Rodimus Prime
Comments: 14
Kudos: 42





	1. Parts 1-4

**Author's Note:**

> Dub con tag is for the psychological effects of the Enigma. Some dialogue taken from _Transformers Volume 2_ #38. Title from “Lanterns,” by Birds of Tokyo.
> 
> Thank you to @unscheming on Twitter, whose suggestion saved this fic!

#### Part 1

“The Enigma is _irrelevant! **Spike must die!**_ ”

Arcee only had a moment to register that the incoming object appeared to stay the same size before the air was knocked out of her and she was flying back. As her feet left the ground and Devastator was distracted, combat coding took over. Chin tucked and arms locked around the Enigma of Combination, automatic processes registered that her current angle would make it a practical impossibility to avoid landing on her head. To compensate, survival programs directed energon flow away from the processor and all but the most fundamental functions were paused. Unfinished thought threads were placed in temporary storage, completed memories were archived, and self-repair regulations were switched to interstrcutural processors. Energon lines throughout her body expanded, and fuel pump pressure switched down to its lowest setting. Last, her joints relaxed, the momentum of the Enigma enough to press them together and keep it close as they flew backward.

She was in stasis before she hit the ground.

“No—the _Enigma_ is the _mission!_ Kill! Spike! **Now!** ”

“You are lucky, Arcee. The forces of _combination_ flow freely between _Devastator_ and the _Engima_. If it had stayed the _same size_ —”

Arcee missed the commentary, her processor wrapped up in bringing her back online. Self-repair moved first, inspecting fuel lines and active reservoirs for breaches. Several were discovered and flagged, repair nanites deployed to stitch up the micrometer-long tears. Tension and pressure sensors activated in her chest, the point of impact, and reports came back that despite denting, nothing major had been crushed or misplaced. Her cranium briefly swam with liquid antibodies, checking for fractures, split wires, or misaligned parts; finding none, the interstructural processors sent the command to her brain module to wake up.

This process took twenty seconds. In that time, Scoop saw his opportunity. Lying beside Arcee’s prone form, forgotten by both Galvatron and Devastator amid their own conflicts, the Enigma would never be so unguarded. Dancing around flying rubble and stray shots fired from friendly cannons, no one tried to stop him as he dashed forward. All of them had lost track of the essence of their conflict, he mused as he reached for the Enigma.

Sensing that an emergency shutdown had taken place, Arcee’s processor bypassed standard online procedures and restarted those threads that had been paused. Short-term memory was brought online, blasting her with the who, where, what, and when (why was a problem for background processes to untangle) while motor relays and sensor networks reconnected, inundating her with further contextual data. Connections reestablished, her processor did a final check to make sure no damage had been sustained that would result in permanent loss of function.

Twenty-five seconds. Scoop’s hand closed around the Enigma’s broadcast horn. The check came back clear.

Thirty seconds. Scoop hefted the Enigma to his chest.

Arcee’s optics came online.

Priority one: secure the Enigma. The no-name mini construction vehicle staring down at her with widening blue eyes intended to prevent that. Unfortunate choice.

The kick came first, a sharp blow across the face that sent him stumbling. Arcee used the momentum to swing herself up. Two punches: face, shoulder.

Scoop dropped the Enigma and lunged at Arcee. It had been a bit since his stint with the Wreckers, but those instincts were hardwired and he knew how to use his density as he slammed into her, shoulder first.

He just hadn’t accounted for her being quite that sturdy. Rather than topple over, arms wrapped around Scoop and his pedes left the ground. He had just enough time to register the dark blue of the sky before he was landing on his head, the crunch of metal the last he heard as he was knocked offline.

Arcee checked once that he was out, then returned to the Enigma, lifting it with more effort than its appearance suggested. Its inner mechanisms hummed with living warmth, the pulsing light of its viewchamber like a beacon amid the chaos. She looked down into it, then up at Devastator, roaring in untethered rage as he pummeled the human structure. Decepticons lined up to be part of the rubble. Comm chatter indicated that Autobot reinforcements were en route, but at most they would be able to subdue the giant, maybe separate the gestaltmates for a few days to force them to think about what they did. She doubted anything could stop them permanently, not with Prowl in that head.

Arcee looked around and spied the abandoned shuttle, forgotten while its passengers raced to be Devastator’s next soccer ball. Like Scoop, she too could spot opportunity. She just happened to be adept at making the most of it.

“Decepticons! Our shuttle is being taken! There is a traitor in our… midst.”

He was a fool, Galvatron thought, as he screamed at the Autobot bird to release him. Any spark made of the same stuff as his own would have all the cunning and brilliance he himself had been so blessed with. He needed to stop forgetting that.

“Arcee—this is _Sideswipe_. Do you read?”

“Ask her if any of this mission is _salvageable_.”

“This isn’t a _mission_ anymore, Kup. I’m going AWOL. Be back in a bit.”

“ _What_ —that’s not how that—”

The comm link dropped dead. Sideswipe and Kup glanced at each other, though neither had any words to fill the confused silence.

#### Part 2

“Y’ello, you’ve got _Captain Rodimus_ on the line and it is looking to be a _fine_ day today, upper decks in the seventies with some of the lower decks down toward the mid-sixties. Due to recent events involving briefcases and the hereafter outlawed opening of, free movie night has been _postponed_ until Rung decides we’ve had ‘adequate time to process historical revelations.’ If you have news involving foolish, ridiculous, or _nonsensical_ obstacles in our quest, press 1 to be transferred to _Megatron’s_ personal comm line. If you have a complaint regarding signage, poorly worded instructions, or height accommodations, press 2 for Ultra Magnus. If you’re lonely and want to talk about your problems to someone who will always be there, press 3 for automatic directions to Swerve’s. Press 4 to be connected with me, _provided_ I’m—”

* _beep*_

“Rodimus?”

“ _Blaster!_ Great timing, we just got back from Fortuna. Don’t talk too long, though, Magnus wants me on _prep work_ for the hearing, and he wrote the summaries himself.”

“There’s a message on the console, incoming transmission from an unknown caller. Asked for details, but all they’re letting slip is they want to talk to you. Want me to patch ‘em through?”

“Hm.” Rodimus considered, letting his hip lean against the hallway wall to let other robots pass through. On the one hand, unknown caller and mysterious intentions usually meant trouble, and one of the main reasons they had landed was to avoid further problems while they took care of business. Let everyone get off the ship for a bit, burn off their excess energy, forget about how they’d almost been responsible for a complete rewrite of all modern history. Accepting the call seemed like a perfect opportunity to pull everyone back into another misadventure with potentially catastrophic consequences, and he imagined Rung and Ratchet both would frown on it.

At the same time, he wanted to put off this hearing. Magnus’ summaries were as grammatically precise and well-cited as the rest of his writing, hours’ worth of reading arranged in a neat stack of datapads on Rodimus’ desk. Reading that he could not focus on, because his spark was dancing with anxiety to the imminent reprimand he would have to deliver. He already had an idea of how the hearing was going to conclude, but it relied on Brainstorm being open and honest in a way the engineer was not known for. If it went poorly, it was going to be a dreadful day for everyone involved.

“Sure,” he decided. “Probably just a _commarketer_.”

“Yes, sir.”

The familiar click and beat of a line being transferred. Rodimus straightened himself and started walking up the hall again, diverging from his original path to his office to head to the middle decks. The view from the windows wasn’t as impressive, but he could still see Fortuna off in the distance, an organic city with enough mechanical business to make it a worthwhile day trip. Walking the length of the _Lost Light_ revealed a subtly changing view as the Stern showed off the way the city’s mechanical hub gleamed in the sun. If this call went long enough, he might chance to walk by “Visages” and see how it was doing. He’d heard—

“Am I speaking to Captain Rodimus?” an unfamiliar voice asked.

“Yep, captain of the _Lost Light_ and quester for the Knights of Cybertron,” he said, eyes snapping to attention. “What’s up?”

“This is Autobot Arcee, requesting permission to dock in the _Lost Light_ ’s shuttle bay.”

“Arcee?” Rodimus went through the list of all the Autobots he knew. “Sorry, Arcee, I’m not remembering you. Who did you serve under?”

“New recruit. Was working with Prowl for a bit, then Optimus Prime. We’ve met.”

“We have?”

“Galvatron, the D-Void…”

“Oh, right!” Rodimus snapped his fingers. “The _shuttle_ , right, that was great. We didn’t really get a chance to talk afterward. My bad.” Except for Drift’s sacrifice, the memory of which was preserved like crystal in his mind, his recollection of the events leading to the revitalization of Cybertron had blurred; he didn’t have much sense of what had happened just before Vector Sigma knocked them all out. Little nudges here and there brought parts back, but he hadn’t had much time to spend worrying over it in the intervening months. “You’re an Autobot now?”

“Yes.”

“Then yeah, come aboard. The more the merrier. When do you estimate your arrival?”

“I’ve just breached atmosphere, should be there in an hour.”

“Perfect, I’ll send instructions along to open the shuttle bay doors and will be there to meet you.” He passed the news to Megatron and Ultra Magnus, also, and wasn’t surprised when only the latter acknowledged the alert.

He and Arcee exchanged farewells and the comm powered down. The conversation been shorter than he’d expected and his curiosity about the new bar hadn’t faded. Knowing now that he had less than an hour to arrive in the shuttle bay, which wouldn’t be enough time to go through all the hearing documents, he decided to take a brief detour. Settle the curiosity, and then he could focus on the important work.

Ratchet wasn’t stalling.

The shuttle’s provisions might have been over the top, but he didn’t know how long it would take to reach Drift or the state he would find him in. So, plenty of fuel was necessary, enough to last two robots at least a month, the maximum time between most solar systems and an energon depot, plus extra rations for the journey outward. Then medical supplies: wiremesh bandages, nanite gel, intravenous lines, sparkstarters, a sorted box of nuts and screws, antiviral downloads, rust repellant, strut stabilizers… the shuttle was turning out better equipped than some of the mobile surgeries he’d worked from during the war. He had the time, though, and the shanix to make sure nothing would be lost to lack of supplies, and he intended to take advantage of that new luxury.

So, it logically followed that the rest of the shuttle should be made comfortable, too. Two berths that folded up into the wall with padding to accommodate vehicle frames. A media library of music and movies to pass the time (the former Cyclonus’ recommendations, the latter, Swerve’s). A few selections from his private engex stash. A packet of data blockers that he’d buried deep among the medical supplies and would claim were standard for any med kit if interrogated.

He knew that last item was why he hadn’t moved a step in the last five minutes, but he told himself that it was a different feeling. Like he was forgetting something. Time ticking by didn’t feel wasted if he was working to remember whatever it was.Part of him grateful for the coming hearing. It had given him another day to work up to his goodbyes, and extra time to not think about what he would say once Drift was on the shuttle with him.

He nudged the box of hex pieces against the wall with his foot. Was it alright that there was nowhere to sit beside the naviconsole and the berths? He’d thought Drift would appreciate the economy of a smaller shuttle, but now that it had been filled with supplies the atmosphere was shifting from cozy to cramped. Would Drift feel claustrophobic, reminded of squatters’ dens and Decepticon outposts? Drift was also a relatively young mech, who would probably itch for a chance to spin his wheels from time to time. Was the shuttle engine powerful enough for multiple planet-stops on their way back to the _Lost Light_?

Ratchet’s knuckle had worked its way between his teeth before he realized what he was doing. Dropping his hand, he forced himself to turn around and exit the small spacecraft, attention focused forward. He’d made up his mind. Drift had earned this home, the most of anyone on board. If no one else was going to step up and do the right thing by returning it to him, Ratchet would resign to do it himself.

He heard the commotion as he stepped out into the shuttle bay. The hangar doors were opening, alien sunlight slipping through the growing crack, and several of their parked craft were being taxied out of the way. Not wanting to get cut off by wandering shuttles, he hurried to the edge of the room, where most of the voices were coming from. A small crowd near the door, loiterers looking for a new source of intrigue. Whirl and Tailgate were among them, chatting, so it was no surprise to find Cyclonus standing further off, watching with still optics.

Perfect. Though he and Cyclonus weren’t on bad terms, they weren’t quite friendly with each other. If it had been one of the people he really cared about, Ratchet would have worried that something in his expression might give him away, but with Cyclonus he wouldn’t have to work so hard to keep the something like guilt off his face.

“Cyclonus,” he greeted.

“Ratchet.” The older of the two offered a polite nod, though his eyes stayed on the door.

“What’s going on? Somebody forget something in Fortuna?” Ratchet asked, keeping his voice light. It was a nice thought, but everyone knew that a change of routine on this ship meant something was about to happen. It could be dangerous, weird, or a combination of the two, but something about it would end up among Swerve’s stand-up materials.

“New arrival,” Cyclonus explained. “Arcee of the Darklands.”

“Your contemporary,” Ratchet said, the name instantly recognizable. “I’ve read her file. Fascinating story.”

“A tested warrior with a spark that rivaled Galvatron’s.” Ratchet felt like he’d just been lightly scolded, so he nodded with his mouth clamped shut. “I cannot imagine that whatever brings her here is good news.”

“Yeah, figured that,” Ratchet sighed. He wondered if he should move his departure up. He’d promised Rodimus he would sit in on the hearing, and he had a few other affairs to get sorted besides, but he didn’t want to get trapped on the _Lost Light_ for another week because of whatever enraged mercenary group or slithering cosmic horror Arcee had brought with her.

He thought he felt Cyclonus’ gaze turn to him. He decided not to confirm it, and eventually the feeling passed.

“Is she here? Did I miss it?”

Rodimus’ panicked shouts preceded his stumble into the hangar. Ratchet greeted him with a pointed look, which he shouldered by simply not noticing it while his gaze darted around the room.

“Not yet, Rodimus,” Hoist’s voice announced over loudspeaker. “We’re just getting the last shuttles cleared for landing.”

“Oh, thank god,” Rodimus said, tilting his head back as his fans released a steady stream of warm air. “Fantastic.”

“You look like you gunned it to get here,” Ratchet noted.

“No, that would be speeding, which is definitely against regulations,” Rodimus said, straightening to flash Ratchet a deeply unappreciated grin. “I ran. I promised Arcee I would be here to meet her, and it would make for a pretty bad first impression of the ship if the captain failed to live up to promises.”

“Don’t you have a hearing to be getting ready for?” Ratchet asked, the question slipping past his vocal censors. Slag. That wasn’t a note he wanted to leave on. The stress of his impending departure was getting to him more than he’d realized, and again he thought Cyclonus was watching him.

Rodimus shrugged.

“Magnus gave me all the materials, just need to read them. Won’t take long. Plus, I already have an idea of how it’s going to go.”

_That_ stirred something in Ratchet’s spark.

“You do? Can’t imagine why we’re bothering to hold a _hearing_ , then.”

“Perhaps this is a conversation that would be _better saved_ when we are not moments from welcoming new company,” Cyclonus said, his deep bass distracting enough that Ratchet was able to go in and snip a couple of the emotional subroutines that had started to loop uncontrollably.

Maybe it would be for the best if he snuck away sooner.

The appearance of an approaching shuttle did not ease his concerns. Starting as a speck above the horizon, it grew as it approached, a little blob of a spacecraft dangling over the city of Fortuna. Ratchet thought he noticed something odd as it approached, but of course Whirl voiced it first.

“It’s _purple_ ,” he said, with a coy look back at Cyclonus, who ignored it with enviable steadiness.

“It’s a Decepticon vessel,” Ratchet confirmed. Several protocols spun online at the sight, but full combat mode waited in stand-by. It wasn’t his job to give the order. “Rodimus?”

“Blaster confirmed Arcee’s ident after our call,” he said. “Bit of a garish choice for a ride, but it’s her.”

“That is rich, coming from you.”

“Thanks, Ratch,” Rodimus said, with a wink and a grin. Ratchet blustered, both for the disrespect and the way the gesture reminded him of Drift, coy in the way he knew got under Ratchet’s plating. As an act of spite, he refused to power down his readied combat systems, though his aiming module grew more annoying with each alerted ping.

Ratchet would admit this much: Rodimus was not a stupid mech. He wouldn’t invite a war-seeking band of Decepticons into the belly of their ship, nor would he refuse his crew the power to defend themselves in a dangerous situation. Simultaneously, he was short-sighted and selfish. His ability to perform feats no one else could or would be willing to attempt meant he was also prone to making mistakes no one could imagine. If it wasn’t an army of Decepticons, then it would be a well-meaning Autobot with a demagogue on her tail, or a data ghost that haunted spacefaring vehicles. For all the time Ratchet had spent on the _Lost Light_ , he still had no idea the limits of the chaos Rodimus was yet capable of summoning to it. So, he kept his coding on stand-by and waited, grim faced.

It wasn’t a nice landing. The shuttle bounced as it set down, the speed a little too fast for Ratchet’s comfort. Twice, taxiing maneuvers had to be reattempted as the shuttle came within feet of clipping another craft, and by the time its parking was deemed sufficient Ratchet was sure he heard more than one fan release its tension. Rodimus was the first to approach, rushing to the starboard hull door. Ratchet followed among the other curious onlookers, hanging back in case any of his anxieties were realized.

The door slid open, and all it revealed was Arcee, now sporting an Autobrand. No mercenaries, no cosmic demons. Ratchet wasn’t ready to relax just yet, but he was grateful he wouldn’t be patching up bullet holes in the near future.

“Welcome to the _Lost Light_ ,” Rodimus said, stepping aside to let Arcee descend to the hangar floor.

“Yes, thank you, Captain.” Her tone was clipped, not the melodic veil of sophistication Ratchet had come to associate with Cyclonus’ voice.

He glanced at the purple ship once more while Rodimus led Arcee in the direction of the rec rooms and the rest of the crowd dispersed. He wasn’t into anything like signs or omens, but the purple hull made his plating itch, and he found his resolve. He would go get a drink. He would attend the hearing. And then, goodbyes or no, he was leaving that night.

Arcee walked with measured steps through the unfamiliar ship, observing its workings with a distant curiosity. In the quiet moments, Prowl had ranted to her a bit about it, the ship of deserters who hauled off just as the real fight for Cybertron was beginning. From his descriptions, she had expected more anarchy. Overcharged mecha speeding down the halls, slamming into each other; circuit boosters passed around like energon goodies; every surface covered in the leavings of swapped fuel. A part of her had known that Prowl was exaggerating (he had a habit), but through the ages she had also been witness to every low their species could reach and had passed beyond the point of disbelief.

A ship led by a dropout Wrecker, a grammar fetishist, and an ex-Decepticon didn’t seem like it should be able to function. And yet…

“What about your third in command?” she asked, interrupting Rodimus’ winding story about Chief Tyrest and a host of other things Arcee resolved to get caught up on later.

Rodimus blinked.

“Ultra Magnus?”

“No, the other one.” Prowl had mentioned him, and he’d come up in a couple of the stories Rodimus had told, though he always seemed in a rush to breeze through those parts.

The brief glance she’d had so far of this ship was far too idyllic. Arcee intended to find its imperfection, satisfy her spark-deep itch to uncover its weak point.

Rodimus glanced away.

“Drift,” he said. “It’s a bit complicated, I guess. He’s not here anymore.” So she’d gathered. “Autobot command—your friend, Prowl?—put Overlord in our cargo bay. Secret research project, you know. He busted out, people got hurt, and Drift took the fall for me.”

“You executed him?”

“No! God, no.” Rodimus looked sick at the thought. “We just—we exiled him. Stripped him of his badge, sent him off. And it’s not like we sent him to his death. His shuttle was packed with plenty of supplies and he’s always been able to take care of himself. He’s fine.”

“But to you, as good as dead.”

She knew she’d gone too far when the lights in Rodimus’ eyes flickered. His plating pulled in, arms crossed in front of himself.

“Why would you say something like that?”

Rodimus knew, what they’d— _he’d_ done to Drift was wrong. Full stop. Not a day went by he didn’t think about what he could have done better, about what a failure he was as a friend and captain. The numbers might be buffed out, but the memory never would be, the guilt another weight on his spark. The knowledge that he was here only by the ultimately meaningless sacrifice of his best friend.

But Drift wasn’t dead. Not to Rodimus, or anyone else on board. He was somewhere in the universe, making his way like he always had, and someday Rodimus would catch up to him and make amends. He hadn’t yet planned the how or the when, but he knew it in his spark.

Arcee ducked her head, expression hidden.

“Sorry,” she said. Her voice had lost that hard edge. “That was bad. I shouldn’t have said that. How about I go grab some energon in the canteen and someone can finish showing me around later?”

Rodimus nodded, then, realizing she hadn’t seen, mumbled a small, “Okay.” He would probably end up doing it himself, because the thought of shoving the task on someone else because their guest said something that hurt his feelings made his spark burn. He would go plow through Magnus’ documents, take care of the hearing, and then come back to show Arcee the rest of the tour. They also needed to assign Arcee a visitor’s hab, and Magnus would expect to know specifications, length of stay…

It struck Rodimus that through all their talk, Arcee hadn’t mentioned her reason for boarding.

“Hey—” He turned to ask but found himself alone in the corridor.

“Damn.” It would probably be rude to go chasing after her. He would just have to ask later, once this hearing was out of the way and he’d reset himself.

45 minutes until he needed to be in the chamber and still just halfway through the current datapad with four more on his desk. He scrolled as fast as he could, eyes latching onto an important word or phrase every few seconds.

He was still thinking about Drift.

20 minutes. One datapad done, two more on the desk, one somewhere on the floor.

Before he’d been roped in with the Kup and joined the Autobots, Drift had been on his own, trying to do some good in a galaxy he had wronged. Becoming an Autobot was a means to an end, a way to maximize his skills by attaching himself to a greater force, and he had confessed to Rodimus that even with their reforms during the war, his place in the Autobots created a chronic imbalance in his aura.

With the fighting over and the _Lost Light_ causing as many problems as it fixed, maybe this had been Drift’s opportunity to return to that personal path of redemption. Was it selfish of Rodimus to want to pull him away from that again? Probably. He was an unusually selfish person.

He needed to be at his seat in 8 minutes. He knew it would take 5 to walk there, 2 to sprint, and there was still what felt like a mountain of documents to get through, a planetful. They were multiplying. And yet he found himself rereading the same sentence, unable to glean any meaning but also unable to move on.

“ _If in the case that we, the committee and the jury, respectively, believe it fair to say that the resolvement of the hearing, that is, the summation of all available evidence and the dispensing of corrective measures, consequential measures, or both, at bar depends upon the judicial stigmatism, defined in section 2 subsection A, of the parties deciding it._ ”

He didn’t want to read anymore. He wished Drift were here. Drift, who had rekindled a fascination with literature in the libraries of Crystal City, who used to talk about what he was reading when Rodimus needed something to drown out his own thoughts. Maybe Drift would be able to spell this out for him. Even if he couldn’t, then he would confirm for Rodimus that yes, this was stupid and a waste of time, and he wasn’t wholly dysfunctional just because the words jammed in his processor and stopped making sense.

He missed Drift.

#### Part 3

“Now that our captain has deigned to join us—Brainstorm, you are being held as defendant in the first hearing of the _Lost Light Internal Legal Affairs Committee_. You have been summoned so you can provide your subjective account to supplement objective data and information regarding those events that were outlined in the datapackets provided previously. You are to speak before an audience of your peers. Rodimus?”

“Yeah, all that. Now, about your faceplate—”

“I apologize, captain, but we do need to open the floor to questions before we begin summation of the accusations.”

“Oh. Yeah, yeah. Any questions?”

Ratchet felt like he’d never rushed so fast out of a room. He’d been pulled to the witness stand for some of the Aequitas trials and had had to maintain his composure as colleagues and friends spoke of committing vile atrocities and crimes against the Cybertronian body, and he’d managed it then. Crammed within the off-purple walls of the hearing chamber, Ratchet’s spark had felt like it was seconds away from bursting from its chamber.

He’d known Brainstorm would get away free, because any ship that had Megatron on board had to reorient its approach to things like law and repercussions. That didn’t make the injustice of it sting any less, nor could he forgive the way Rodimus’ eyes glazed over, the half-hearted forgiveness he’d extended Brainstorm that sounded more rote than Magnus listing off a detainee’s infractions. He wasn’t taking this seriously, as though going easy on one crew member would make up for the gross miscarriage of justice against another.

Enough of this. Ratchet felt sick just walking down the hallway, knowing who had bought it. He’d grabbed the last piece of equipment he’d needed—a remote tracking device—and was on his way back to the shuttle bay. He’s scheduled himself for a fly around just a few minutes from now, and provided he was out on time without drawing any attention, he would probably have a full day before anyone noticed anything.

The bay was quiet compared to the earlier clamor, just the occasional creak of settling metal to bid Ratchet a farewell. His shuttle was where he’d left it, but as he pinged the door with his ident, a noise from among the parked vehicles stole his attention. He looked around, unusual paranoia keeping him alert. He didn’t know what he would do if someone had caught on and come to say goodbye.

The sounds continued, though, something non-sentient and mechanical with footsteps occasionally layered in. Ratchet was about to dismiss it when a _bang_ and a _crunch_ and an “ _Ouch!_ ” had him wheeling away from the lowering hatch and seeking out the source.

“Frag it, fraggitall,” Ratchet openly groused as he stole between vehicles, searching the sorry mech with the missing limb or whatever it was they’d done to themselves. “ _You alright?_ Slag this good for nothing ship, _need help?_ Something _always_ has to go wrong, can’t even get a cube of energon without, _what happened?_ Damned super scraplets and sod all.”

The hull of the purple Decepticon ship was wide open, interior lights revealing a well-stocked cargo hold full of what looked suspiciously like human-made armaments. Ratchet didn’t have time to look too closely at them, because on peering inside his attention was immediately drawn to the red robot sitting on the floor, clutching his helm.

“What are you doing, Rodimus?” he asked, voice dryer than Ultra Magnus’ sense of humor.

Rodimus swiveled around to see him, wide-optic look interrupted by a wince as he pressed his hand against the side of his head again.

“Ratchet!” he said, standing up. “I was just looking for Arcee. You seen her?”

“No.” Ratchet looked around. “You thought she was hiding in her own cargo?”

“No, of course not.” Rodimus looked hurt by the accusation, which sent a satisfied zing through Ratchet’s spark. It served him right. “I was looking for her on the upper decks, and when I couldn’t find her, I asked security for a quick sweep. First thing they found was her coming down toward the shuttle bay, so I came to look. Thought it made sense to check her shuttle first.”

“And while looking around, you hit your head? On what, the ceiling?”

“I was trying to get this down,” Rodimus said, bending down to retrieve a box made of dark gray metal. It was decorated with Cybertronina glyphs, a contrast from the Earth materials that compromised most of the room’s contents.

“Right.” Ratchet’s window to leave was steadily narrowing. “Well, I’m sure she’ll turn up.” He turned away.

“Wait, Ratchet!” Footsteps followed him. Ratchet considered ignoring the call. It would be too suspicious, though; no one out for a stroll around the planet would be so anxious to leave. He turned back.

“What?” he snapped, hoping the testiness in his voice would be chalked up to the existing animosity between them.

Rodimus hesitated, but went on, “You were around humans for a while, right?”

“Yes.” A brief period of his life, but a memorable one.

“I picked up a radio frequency while I was looking. Not sure, but I think it’s coming out of this ship,” Ratchet said. “It’s not one I recognize, but with all this human tech onboard, I was wondering if it might just be something from Earth. Could you check it out?”

“You know, I was only on Earth for a few years, Rodimus,” Ratchet said. “Not enough time to learn _everything_ about the planet.”

“Yeah, but you’re here. Could you just give it a listen?”

Ratchet wanted to say no.

“Fine.” He stepped up into the ship. “What frequency?”

Rodimus helped him adjust for it. Ratchet immediately wasn’t surprised that none of their scanners had picked it. Even within the ship, the pitch was grainy and distorted, like he was hearing it through a busted speaker. It made him question why Rodimus thought the source was even in here, when it was likely somewhere over in Fortuna or the outlying settlements, but he decided to ignore the obvious questions in favor of keeping this conversation as short as possible.

“It’s not like anything I heard on Earth,” he reported. “Like I said, though, don’t let that rule out the possibility.”

“Hm.” Rodimus wore a look that Ratchet wasn’t used to seeing on that face. He seemed, for lack of a better word, thoughtful, and it put Ratchet on alert.

“What?”

“Arcee didn’t say why she was coming, and she’s avoided me when I’ve asked,” Rodimus said. “I know, it was stupid to let her on without asking what she was doing out here, so don’t bother pointing it out.” Ratchet hadn’t been planning to, but at least Rodimus acknowledged it. “But it is weird, isn’t it? A Decepticon ship, apparently straight from Earth, piloted by a robot as old as Cyclonus and yet a newly minted Autobot? Why come out all this way?”

“Is that all?” he asked. It was odd, but he needed to get out of here before whatever it was blasted open, and he hoped his blatant skepticism would be enough to throw Rodimus off and let him leave.

“No.” Rodimus’ optics flared. “Earlier, when she called to announce her arrival, she said she used to work for Prowl.”

Oh.

“You should comm Ultra Magnus.”

“Yeah.”

The still of the night was torn through the with roar of a shuttle.

“The _frag!_ ” Ratchet startled, whipping around to look out into the hangar. No one else was supposed to be leaving now. He’d specifically chosen this time because he knew he would be alone when he—

“Hey!” he shouted again. “ _That’s_ —!”

It had been a lucky thing, to stumble across this stocked shuttle, unlocked and abandoned on the hangar floor. Arcee had survived with worse for the purpose of extended space travel, so to run across something like this was a luxury she’d been unable to pass up. With the hatch manually locked and an okay from the controller to go ahead, she engaged the engine and initiated an abbreviated takeoff sequence, intent to get out of here as soon as possible. Stealing a shuttle and taking off without a word was probably leaving more of a mess than she would normally, but Optimus and Prowl could handle the cleanup.

She’d done them and everyone else back on Earth a favor, she told herself as she maneuvered the little craft into the alien night. On the way, she had wiped the ship’s ident codes and removed its integrated tracking system, making it functionally invisible on Decepticon scanners. With their brand of luck, the _Lost Light_ ers would be so wrapped up in their next misadventure they would forget about the ugly purple shuttle sitting unused in their hangar. It would sit, and the artifact, carefully hidden and without any more lives to interfere with, would sit with it, forgotten for another however many more millions of years.

“Magnus, I need a _team_ in the _sky_ , Arcee stole one of our shuttles and is headed toward upper atmosphere. Do you— _shit_ , Ratchet, what the _frag_.”

The hull door had just slammed closed in front of Rodimus’ nose, a rush of metal and air that had him jumping back. Ratchet had ascended to the navigation deck, but Rodimus hadn’t expected him to start pushing buttons. He rushed to the ladder and followed upstairs, emerging onto an upper level that opened into a viewing shield and control console. Ratchet was in the pilot’s seat, fingers raking across buttons and switches.

“What are you _doing_?” Rodimus demanded, running forward to watch over his shoulder as Ratchet input a takeoff command.

“Pursuing,” Ratchet said. “That’s _my ship_.”

“What?” Rodimus asked, just to catch himself as the floor jostled underneath him.

“Either hold on or buckle up. _Hoist_ ,” Ratchet leaned close to the comm mic, “that bay door better stay _open_.”

“Sure, Ratchet,” Hoist said, voice nervous as all slag. Rodimus realized that was another crew member he was going to have to reprimand, this time for letting a nonapproved vessel take off, but he didn’t have to worry about it for long as the shuttle juttered again and pulled forward. Rodimus stumbled, losing his grip on Ratchet’s seat back.

“Ratchet!”

“I told you to hang on.”

“No, this is insane.” Rodimus stretched forward, trying to slap at the console. “Ratchet, you need to land right now. As your captain, I’m _ordering_ you to—”

“You’re not my captain anymore.”

“ _What_ does _that_ —”

Ratchet hit the launch key. The floor shot out from under Rodimus.

He felt himself fly, then crash, plating vibrating from the shock as he tried to sit up against the wall. Other things landed around him, boxes and crates that should have been secured prior to takeoff. He was still shouting at Ratchet, but his words were muffled by the sound of an engine pushing to its maximum capacity. The docking bay disappeared from around them, and then the ground as Ratchet angled the craft up toward the sky. Rodimus could see Arcee’s shuttle, a distant, brilliant fleck amongst the gathering stars, and he had no idea how Ratchet planned to catch up to it.

As his body adjusted to the G forces, he found the strength to stand. Okay, this was how they were doing it. Ratchet clearly wasn’t in the mood to talk, so it seemed the next most productive thing would be to help him chase down Arcee. Slow, careful steps got him back to the navigation console, where at last he flopped down in the co-pilot’s seat.

“How can I help?”

Ratchet glanced at him, a wary look that he didn’t think he deserved. Whose idea had it been to chase after the possible spec ops agent?

“Slag if I know,” Ratchet said, refocusing on the view screen. “I’ve never flown a Decepticon craft. You know anything about this thing?”

No, but Rodimus had hijacked enough vessels to have an idea of where to start. Ratchet clearly knew enough to get it off the ground and moving, but the engines were squealing at a pitch that didn’t match their current speed. Spying transformation switches, Rodimus toyed with them a bit, lowering and raising the landing gear, maneuvering the flaps and ailerons. He knew he’d found something useful when he hit one and the screeching stopped, the shuttle pitching forward as whatever had been causing the drag miraculously vanished. Arcee’s ship was getting bigger.

“Awesome,” Rodimus said, grinning down at Ratchet even as the expression wasn’t returned. “What’s next? Weapons?”

Ratchet glanced at him again.

“She’s on our side, remember?”

“Eh, just checking.” Rodimus continued to play with the switches available to him. He wasn’t stupid, he knew which ones to avoid and when something did the opposite of what it was supposed to. As he pressed buttons and turned dials, he was paying attention to the feel of the ship, the way it hugged the air. Rodimus had no wish to be a flier, but he thought if he ever had to go through a frame overhaul, he could rock a pair of wings. A ship in its sweet spot almost as good as smooth metal beneath his wheels. He continued to play and incrementally they made progress, coming up on the little getaway ship’s less powerful engine.

“So, are you going to tell me what the deal is with that shuttle before we catch up to Arcee, or are you going to make me wait until _after_ we bring her in and Magnus has read her full Mirasda rights?” His tone was casual, spirits relaxed some as he tuned himself to the ship. His hands liked having things to do, and here there were so many ways to keep them busy.

“Not your business.”

The response was sharp; Rodimus felt the cut. He looked over at Ratchet, distracted from his fiddling.

“Um, pretty sure a member of my crew deserting is entirely my business. Captain, remember?”

“I couldn’t possibly forget,” Ratchet griped.

Rodimus’ frame wanted to sink in, pull away from the thorny presence beside it, but he refused it the luxury and tried to return his focus to co-piloting. He knew Ratchet didn’t like him. A lot of people didn’t, but Ratchet was nice and up front about it, a refreshing change of pace. It wasn’t even a case where a robot was openly hostile to him for no reason; he’d faced people like that ever since he’d joined the Autobots and had accepted them as a constant in his life. No, Ratchet had laid out the reasons why he disliked Rodimus so strongly and made it clear that there was no chance for Rodimus to compensate for his many flaws.

“Good,” he said, hardening himself. “So, you know that you can either tell me now, or we can reconvene the Internal Affairs Committee. Your choice.”

“Another hearing, good. You can dispense more of your brand of justice.”

“It’s a _committee_. Ultra Magnus and Advocate Xaaron both agreed—”

“You know what the problem is with the _Lost Light_?” Ratchet interrupted. “It’s not the number of broken people we have on board. People come, they realize they make mistakes, they decide they’re going to do better. That’s great. The problem is that it _moves_. It takes people out of the environments where they made their mistakes, which is what gives them that opportunity to reflect and reevaluate, but it never brings them back to fix what they broke. We just keep fixing other problems, like that will ever really account for all the mess we left behind.”

Rodimus stared. Ratchet hadn’t spoken that many consecutive words to him since they last left Cybertron. Since he’d revealed the truth about Overlord.

“This is about Drift.”

Ratchet stared ahead. His red fingers tightened around the yoke.

“I need that shuttle.”

The warning came comically late. A big red message box appeared on the viewscreen, Rodimus started to say “Ra—” and then the shuttle shuddered, an impact that sent both robots flying out of their seats. They hit the wall in a single painful collision, fighting for balance as the craft started to hurtle on its axis.

“The frag was that?!” Ratchet demanded, his intimidating demeanor offset by the way he scrambled and clawed for purchase against the slick purple floor.

“Satellite,” Rodimus coughed out, pinned against the wall by Ratchet’s frame. He too was scrabbling, but his were panicked movements, his limbs desperate for control as the world rocked and shifted around him. He managed to get hold of Ratchet’s back armor, but that was ripped away as the craft swung sideways and they were sent plunging to the opposite wall. Rodimus winced as he landed on Ratchet, his thoughts moving instantly to how Drift would feel if he found out Rodimus had crushed his favorite person.

And since he didn’t have time to unpack all that, he switched to action mode.

The rocking of the shuttle made it too risky to try to jump all the way back to the controls. However, as he got his feet underneath him against the wall, he watched the debris of the room slide with the changes in gravity, some things scraping slowly where he and Ratchet had just rolled. Still risky, but manageable.

Rodimus checked once more that he wasn’t standing on anything of Ratchet’s, and then he sprung, arms outstretched to catch a fallen shelf as it was dragged down the floor. His added weight speeded its descent, so he scrambled to the top and used it as a springboard to the next piece of debris, a locked storage chest. Piece by piece, he hurled and flung himself across the command deck, avoiding flying objects whenever gravity’s direction shifted. He managed to get his arms wrapped around one of the support crew chairs, and from there it was easy to swing and launch his way back to command. He grabbed the yoke, pressing his pede to the floor while pulling up with all his strength, while his other hand hammered out commands against the keypad. The shuttle gave a last aerodynamic twist, and then it swung back into balance, finding its equilibrium like the peace that followed an electron storm.

The crash of debris was silenced, a few last baubles and shreds clattering to the floor like applause. Rodimus let his fans whirr for a moment, focused on the sound of stress escaping his body, before he turned a look over his shoulder. Ratchet was glaring at him from the floor, banged up but so fantastically alive.

“Y’know, Ratchet, there’s a saying on this ship: ’Hold on or buckle up.’ Should’ve paid more attention to that.” The glare intensified. Rodimus was thrilled.

“Stop looking at me!” Ratchet snapped. “Where’s Arcee?”

Rodimus turned back to the view shield to see empty night, shimmering dust-like stars. No shuttles. Just them, alone at the threshold.

“Uh.”

“Dammit. Dammit, _dammit!_ ” Ratchet’s fist pounded the ground and a few more broken objects rained to the floor. “Frag! That damn hearing, frag it all!” His voice was rough, bleating static in place of words as his temper raged. Rodimus watched, no idea what to do.

“It’s an Autobot shuttle,” he said. “We can track her.”

“And? What good will that do?” Ratchet demanded of the floor. “She knows we’re chasing her. She won’t stop, and she’s got enough fuel to keep going to the end of the galaxy if she knows how to use it. Frag it _all!_ ”

“You could take another shuttle,” Rodimus tried, but Ratchet wasn’t listening to him anymore, lost in his own rage as he lay blame on seemingly everything that crossed his mind.

This time, when Rodimus’ frame closed up, he didn’t fight it. He felt small. Drift, he thought, would know what to do. Drift would have pushed Ratchet’s anger until it reached a breaking point, a height so ill-fitting for the circumstances that the practical robot would have no choice but to move on. Rodimus wasn’t brave enough to pursue that end himself, though, and they were in this mess precisely because of Drift’s absence.

His fraught mind searching for distraction, Rodimus noticed the glow. A red light, easy to miss amid all the purple, shown from between two panels in the shuttle walls. Normally tightly sealed, the crashing had knocked them loose, and something snuck out, alive in a way Rodimus couldn’t explain. He peeled himself from the chair and walked across the room, indifferent as he stepped over Ratchet, whose ranting had devolved to muttered cursing as he continued to berate the circumstances.

As the fright of being hurtled around the cabin wore off, exhaustion swept into its place. Ratchet was built of old metal. He could feel the creak in his limbs as he pushed himself to standing, servos swaying before he found his balance. He would need to check himself over, make sure none of the blows he’d taken would degenerate faster than his slow self-repair could keep up with. Unlikely, but one of the possible side effects of not dying yet.

What a mess. How did he expect to find Drift if he couldn’t even manage to get off-planet without twelve things going wrong? Though he would admit, he was surprised Rodimus didn’t intend to stop him. Logically, it made sense, but Rodimus wasn’t a robot known for thinking ahead.

“Hey, Ratchet,” the subject of his thoughts said, “turn your receiver back on.”

Ratchet turned around. In his spare minute, Rodimus had pried away a whole panel of wall, revealing the inner workings of the ship. Nestled inside and exuding a nauseating red light was something… not alien, but unfamiliar. It pulsed with the same patterns as Cybertronian biolights, and Ratchet felt his plating prickle at the mild radiation it dispersed. Out of some parts curiosity, some resignation, he switched on his receiver, still tuned to the unfamiliar frequency.

Sound assaulted him, opposing melodies laid over each other so many times it was impossible to follow one without sinking into all the others. It was loud, lows and highs crashing, dizzying the senses with the crush of music, and he switched it off, face contorted in a grimace.

“Guess you found it,” he said. “No surprise she wanted to stash it with us. That sounds like what you would hear if you put Soundwave through the scrapper.”

“Any idea what it is?” Rodimus asked.

“It’s not from Earth,” was the best he could do.

“Figured that. The shell is covered in Cybertronian glyphs, but like, way old. I bet Cyclonus could recognize them.” Rodimus tilted his head. “Does it remind you of the Matrix?”

There was a passing resemblance. Ratchet had only held the Matrix for a few hours total in his life and he hadn’t committed many of the details to memory, but the basic shape was there. What he assumed to be a photonic core, brilliant, encased in a thick metal shell. In place of a handle, though, this bore what looked like a broadcast array, which would account for the garbled radio transmission they were receiving. Despite his reservations, he found that he’d moved closer to it and Rodimus, curiosity taking over from his prior wrath.

“I suppose,” he allowed.

“I don’t think it’s a bomb.”

“Me neither.”

A passing thought drifted through his processor— _Drift would know_ —and the object pulsed. Once, twice. A flash.

Long-range scanners detected the massive energy pulse. Damn. Arcee hadn’t thought they would get the Decepticraft airborne again, let alone chasing her. That passing satellite had been both a gift and a curse: she was free, but now there was no doubt they were aware of their new cargo.

Still, she considered the mission a success. For some amount of time, she’d gotten the Enigma out of the hands of those who would use it to extend the war. With it off the playing field, maybe she would have a better chance of getting through to Prowl, of starting to fix the mess he’d made. A tall order, but one she felt she could handle.

Leaving the _Lost Light_ to its fate, Arcee absconded.

#### Part 4

“Try again.”

“Yes, sir. Rodimus, come in Rodimus. This is Blaster, coming to you live from the _Lost Light_ command deck. Do you read me? Status and further instruction requested. Over.”

Ultra Magnus stood at attention, eyes locked on the viewscreen showing three of their shuttles dispersing into the night, the fourth already out of range. Their pilots had been told to follow the on-board tracking software, but not to breach atmosphere until they received further word from their captain. Either captain. It was standard protocol, but it quickly fell apart when one refused to leave his hab and the other stopped answering his comms moments after issuing an emergency alert. He hadn’t known Rodimus had left the _Lost Light_ until Hound’s report came in.

Not standard protocol. The motors in Ultra Magnus’ jaw clenched. Once they had this situation under control, he would see about putting someone else on the controller shift.

The control panel refreshed as the latest information poured in. The crew-piloted shuttles were entering the upper layers of the atmosphere, performing stalling maneuvers to keep from straying too far. The little data they were getting from the Decepticon shuttle showed that its acceleration had decreased dramatically, and they were no longer ascending, traveling in a steady trajectory over the planet’s surface.

“Ultra Magnus, I have a visual on Rodimus’ ship,” Bluestreak reported.

“Pull it up.”

The imagine unfurled across the wide view screen, green datapoints morphing and coalescing into a live feed image. The telescopic cameras were tracking the shuttle as it flew, though _floated_ seemed a better term. The engines were alive and keeping them up in the air, but there was an unnatural stillness to the image that made the ship look like a chunk of debris floating through space. Active, moving, but dead.

“Again.”

Blaster dialed up a few settings on his console and leaned back to the mic.

“Rodimus, come in Rodimus. This—”

The incoming comms buzzed with static.

“This is Rodi—ack, _Ratchet_ , this is Ratchet. I read you. Do you copy?”

The crew on deck relaxed, but there was something in the old robot’s voice that Ultra Magnus struggled to identify.

“Ratchet, this is Ultra Magnus. Report.”

“Report… um, Arcee’s gone. We lost her. Satellite. Crash. Is Cyclonus there?”

“No. I’ve called him to the bridge.” He tagged the ping with _urgent_ , even knowing Cycolnus’ reputation for being prompt. “Where is Rodimus?”

“Here! I’m here,” Rodimus’ voice crackled down the line. “Present. Available.”

“What’s your status?”

“Good! Weird? Ratchet’s banged up, with is bad. He landed badly on his spinal strut, there’s a disk knocked out of… how do I…”

Magnus’ orbital ridge knitted further. He sent a ping to Streetwise to have the shuttles converge on the Decepticraft and keep it in their sights. Visual on the command cockpit would be stellar, but flight path integrity was the main concern. If Rodimus or Ratchet weren’t in the right mind to pilot, emergency landing procedures would need to be engaged.

“Ratchet, are you still there? Rodimus sounds incoherent, what is his status?”

“He’s _fine_. And, he’s right.” It was hard to tell whether the confusion in Ratchet’s voice was due to the situation, or Rodimus’ correct diagnosis. “Processor’s functioning normally. It’s _loud_ , but it’s working.”

“He’s overheating?”

“Not his fans, his _thoughts_.”

“Is his comm link malfunctioning?”

“He’s _bright_ like a goddamn sun, I can barely get two words in. Will you _shut that off?_ ”

“Ratchet?” Ultra Magnus asked. Shuttles inbound.

“Not _you_.”

“Stop _yelling_ at me!” Rodimus demanded, volume raising and lowering like he was pacing around the microphone. “I heard you the first time.”

“I don’t see _how_ ; I can barely hear myself.”

“Aw, poor Rodimus, doesn’t get to hear his own voice.”

“ _You’re_ Rodimus, that’s _my line_.”

“Rodimus, Ratchet, I’ve directed one of the flight crew to board,” Ultra Magnus interjected. “If you are able, please lower the hatch for arrival, otherwise they have been directed to engage in emergency stove—”

“No, don’t!” The synchronicity of the two voices was so unnerving it gave Magnus pause.

“Is Cyclonus there?” Rodimus asked.

“There’s something on board,” Ratchet said. “Don’t know what it is, but you can’t let anyone else get near it.”

“It did a weird thing. I’m Rodimus, but also I’m Ratchet? And both? I don’t like it.”

“Those sound like the same things, Rodimus,” Magnus said.

“They’re not.” Ratchet sounded exasperated now, like Ultra Magnus was the one making this needlessly complex.

“Sir?” Cyclonus’ voice came as a blessing. Ultra Magnus gestured him forward.

“Cyclonus just arrived,” he said. “Cyclonus, Rodimus and Ratchet uncovered something on the Decepticon shuttle Arcee arrived in. It’s…” He couldn’t describe what it had done, because he didn’t understand what the pair was going on about.

“I can _feel_ Ratchet’s processor,” Rodimus said, rushing like talking fast would make him more comprehensible. “He’s thinking and it’s all really fast and hard, but it’s not rough like you would expect? Like, that feeling you get when there’s grit in your gears, I thought it would be like that, but it’s more like there’s just _a lot_ of gears and it takes a lot of power to turn them all. And he keeps thinking about me and my thoughts, and I’m thinking about him, and then I get stuck because I can’t keep track of who’s who because all the thoughts start to sound the same and I don’t know whether they came from me anymore. It’s a big thought reservoir and we’re just pulling them out at random. I don’t even know if I’m thinking the things I’m saying!”

Cyclonus glanced up at Ultra Magnus, optics as hard to read as ever. He leaned over the comm mic.

“Can you send an image capture of the object?” he asked.

“Sure,” Ratchet mumbled. Rodimus had gone silent.

A moment later, Blaster raised his hand.

“Image received.”

Ultra Magnus nodded.

“Put it up.”

Windowed over the constant feed of the shuttle, the picture was hard to make sense of at first. Magnus’ optical centers struggled to differentiate the tangle of wires from the item they ensnared, not helped by the off-white glare reflecting off Ratchet’s optic lenses.

“It’s the Enigma of Combination,” Cyclonus said.

“What’s that?” Ultra Magnus asked.

“A plague,” Cyclonus said. “Considered a long-lost relic in my own time. I would doubt this was the legitimate article, if Rodimus hadn’t so perfectly summarized some of its effects.”

“It can do more?” What they were already going through sounded like too much for one robot to handle. Or two.

Cyclonus’ hesitated.

“Well, you see…”

“No. No, no, _so much_ _no_ , you’re _kidding_. Ratchet, tell me they’re kidding!”

“I don’t bloody well know!” he snapped back. He’d just started to calm himself down when Rodimus’ anxiety had spilled over again and set his spark racing. He pressed his hands to his face and tried to focus on keeping his vents open, which was a challenge when he kept getting reports about Rodimus’ fluctuating air flow.

Ratchet had sunk back into the captain’s chair while Rodimus paced the room, occasionally tripping when he kicked the supplies scattered across the floor. It wasn’t enough to halt his tumble of thoughts or the way his processor kept leaping to conclusions Ratchet didn’t know how to keep up with.

“I can’t be in a combiner with Ratchet!”

_He hates me he hates me he hates me_ rattled around their processors like a box full of screws. A helmache blossomed behind Ratchet’s optics.

“The Enigma has determined otherwise,” Cyclonus’ voice said over the loudspeaker.

“What does that mean? It’s not _thinking_ , is it?” Rodimus asked, and Ratchet’s orbital ridge tightened further. He’d thought of that question.

“I don’t think anyone knows,” Cyclonus said. “It’s ancient technology, built on the same principles that govern sparks.” Principles that even modern science still knew so little about; Ratchet was going to say it, but froze as he felt Rodimus turn it over in this own thoughts. “The Enigma has you in a holding pattern right now. There isn’t enough of you to form a whole combiner, so it’s keeping your sparks connected until it can interface with a third Cybertronian.”

Ratchet felt Rodimus’ idea and his glower deepened.

“I don’t have the expertise or the skills to try to disconnect something like that,” he said. “Sparks are _complicated,_ Rodimus, and there’s still so much we don’t know about them. I don’t even know how this connection is being maintained to this rate.” Rodimus’ next idea wasn’t a great deal better. “Have you met your crew? The moment you put it in a box and tell no one to look, at least three people are going to make it their personal quest.”

“It also won’t do any good to isolate the Enigma,” Cyclonus added. “Because the holding pattern is an open channel, you have become conduits for the Enigma’s energies, a sort of pseudo-combination. If one of you encounters someone the Enigma finds acceptable, it will complete the process, regardless of its distance from you at the time.”

Rodimus stilled, then sunk to the floor.

“So, either we drag another person into this mess with us, or we’re stuck in this shuttle, trying to think over each other forever?” The maelstrom of emotions that surged between them was too thick to identify anything specific. A negativity storm, Drift would have called it, or other nonsense like that.

“If I may,” Cyclonus said, interrupting no one. “Ratchet, I do respect you as a physician, but modern medicine is not the only source of knowledge concerning the Cybertronian body. In my research regarding the development of theology during my absence, I found that certain sects devoted significant effort to the study and manipulation of sparks. For example, advanced spark meditation has been practiced for generations by Spectralists.”

“Drift’s a Spectralist,” Ratchet and Rodimus said. Ratchet cringed. He hoped that wasn’t going to be a common thing.

“Indeed. I can’t guarantee he can sever the connection, but he might be able to help you.”

It was an idea. Ratchet thought about the long debates he’d gotten into with Drift, about the nature of sparks and their relationship with the Cybertronian body. Though he was loathe to attribute anything to the metaphysical forces Drift would harp on, there was objective evidence that meditation and martial arts had an impact on the processor and the body, which would in turn affect the functioning of the spark.

Simultaneously, Rodimus’ mind was running with the idea of seeing Drift again, asking him for help, knowing that Drift would jump on the chance to take care of Ratchet. Embarrassment bloomed between them and Ratchet found his own train of thought derailed.

“Would it be appropriate to call Drift for this?” Ultra Magnus asked, his voice breaking their contemplation. “The truth about Overlord was revealed months ago, and since then we’ve made no effort to contact him. To approach him now so he can solve this seems exploitative.”

Rodimus stood up, pulling his posture up straight. It didn’t match the emotions he was feeling while he was on the floor, but to Ratchet’s amazement, as he pulled himself up his confidence seemed to move with him. The mind and the body, acting as one.

“I’ll take the blame,” he said.

“For what?” Ratchet asked, though he felt the answer before he heard it.

“However Drift feels. It’s my fault we didn’t try to find him sooner, and it’s my fault we’re bringing him this problem now.”

Their optics met, and Ratchet realized it was hard to tell what Rodimus was feeling so often because a single look meant so many things: frustration over the current situation, guilt for his role in creating it, grief for the friendship he’d ruined, and more that was too far on the periphery for Ratchet to decipher. His thoughts were going in so many directions all the time, of course it would be a challenge for someone on the outside to try to keep up. Ratchet felt something sticky and uncomfortable well up within his own spark, an emotion that Rodimus must have also noticed for the way he broke eye contact by sweeping back to the view shield.

“Ratchet doesn’t deserve to be stuck with something like this,” he said. For all that he wanted to, Ratchet could not doubt his honesty.

“How do you intend to locate Drift?” Ultra Magnus asked.

“I have a tracker.”

“I know the specifications for his shuttle.”

“Would you prefer a different ship? Or extra supplies?”

This was moving quickly. It had to, because Ratchet couldn’t imagine spending another hour like this, never mind how long the actual journey would take, but the back and forth was leaving him reeling.

“No, too risky,” Rodimus decided. “This is stocked for way more people than us. It’ll be fine. Anything else is just asking for the Enigma to seal up its disaster trine.”

“I’ll have Rewind compile you a list of known energon traders with minority Cybertronian populations. That will be your best opportunity to refuel without risking additional exposure.”

“Thanks, Mags. Take care of the place while we’re gone, you know the drill.”

“Of course, Rodimus. Uh, stay safe?”

Rodimus laughed, a sound that Ratchet felt as a golden thread, spun in a ripple through space before vanishing to nothing. He squinted, trying to make sense of what the hell that had been, but his thoughts were too quickly overrun by Rodimus’ own.

“Don’t worry, Ratchet’s pride will make sure I get back in one piece.”

_You—!_

Ultra Magnus waited until Blaster gave the signal that comms had dropped connection before he allowed his shoulders to relax. The shuttles were recalled, though Bluestreak held their view on the Decepticraft as it tilted up and blasted out of range.

“Should we be concerned for them?” he asked.

“The Enigma is not by itself dangerous,” Cyclonus said. “The robots it ensnares must determine their own fates.”

Ultra Magnus thought about the two of them, trapped on a spaceship with nothing but each other’s thoughts to keep them busy. He wasn’t convinced Rodimus would be able to keep his promise.


	2. Part 5

With the shuttle already partway there and no worry left about chasing anyone, it was relatively simple for them to break free of the planet’s atmosphere and enter open space. Ratchet took up the pilot’s seat again, though he offered a nod of acknowledgement to Rodimus’ emergency flight skills. Rodimus returned to his exploration of the control panel, with a degree more caution; neither were saying it, but they suspected his tinkering had caused the late warning. These were tasks they could focus on without thinking too hard, and as long as they were equally invested, they could work without overwhelming each other.

Ratchet withdrew the tracker from his subspace, trying to keep his thoughts neutral as he hooked it into the navicomp. He didn’t want Rodimus to know how he’d felt a few hours earlier when he’d stowed it away, and though he was able to keep his thoughts free of those feelings, Rodimus did pick up the effort it took to keep them at bay. Curiosity floated across, followed by self-chastisement. Ratchet did what he could to ignore both.

Tracker connected, he brought up the navicomp controls and made sure the connection was steady. He’d planned to just narrow down the shuttle details himself, work through the logs of what had been taken out when, but Rodimus would be able to identify it exactly, saving him the effort. He just needed the serial number input to the—

“Yeah, I can do that,” Rodimus said. He reached for the keyboard before he realized Ratchet hadn’t made the request out loud.

Embarrassment. Anxiety. Were these just Rodimus’ default settings?

“Thanks,” Ratchet said, pushing the controls toward him. Maybe if he kept talking to Rodimus like he couldn’t feel the other half of the conversation forming behind the scenes, they would be able to pretend everything was normal.

“No problem.” Rodimus accepted the keyboard and filled in what he knew about the shuttle. “It’s not you, just so you know. I’m just like this.”

“Like what?”

_Embarrassment. Anxiety. Default settings._

“You were right.”

Ratchet frowned.

“You don’t act like it.”

He looked over at the robot beside him, with his brilliant paintjob and boisterous, active spoiler. Ratchet doubted that anyone who made that much of a spectacle of himself would know what self-consciousness felt like. Rodimus stroked delicate, playful fingers across his chassis, and Ratchet wondered if he’d already figured out how to access Ratchet’s optical feed.

“Nah, I just know what looks good,” he said with a mild laugh. “It’s good for keeping people from noticing all this.” He waved to his head. Despite his mild tone, the volume of his thoughts was increasing. Ratchet shook his head, but unlike his own thoughts, these wouldn’t clear so easily. They built, a mounting tide of half-finished ideas and emotions, constantly replenished. Ratchet knew his impressions weren’t making the space clearer, but he clung to them, his lifeline back to his own mind. Stringing together a sentence required fighting through more distractions than he knew one mind could be capable of creating.

“Okay,” he pushed out, “this isn’t going to work. Not all the way to… Where is this taking us?”

“Scarvix,” Rodimus read off. “Planet on the outer rim of the galaxy.”

“Yeah, I’m not going to make it that long if we’re building on each other the whole time.”

Rodimus’ response was immediate, though his retort was not, a thousand thoughts turned to, _How do I stop this?_

The pain came from behind this time, a new ache blooming at the juncture between helm and neck. Rodimus seemed the catch the discomfort his annoyance had caused and pulled back, distracting himself with plans for the Rod Pod and planets he wanted to stop after they got back from this side quest and places they had visited before. A multitude of processes happening simultaneously, channels open in every direction so that navigating them became an impossible task. Ratchet could only be swept along in its tide.

“We need to distract you,” he decided once he could get enough threads together to form an idea. “Your processor is looking for something to focus on. If we can get it working on a task, it might help.”

Suspicion, but also a desire to try anything that would help. Ratchet knew that Rodimus, despite his flaws, generally meant well, and that combination of emotions confirmed it. He received a glance for that thought, a burst of confusion, offense, and a little gratitude, but Rodimus didn’t comment aloud. If he thought anything distinct, it was lost amid the eddies of his processor.

“Have anything in mind?” he asked.

Ratchet glanced back at the mess of a ship, then at the navicomp. Tracking software had long since identified Drift’s shuttle and the computer was almost finished charting the course. After that, autopilot would take over until either journey’s end or they had to make a detour, which could mean days until he needed to be in this chair again. That would probably be just enough time to get this place cleaned up, fixed, and organized, so that at least they weren’t tripping over broken furniture and shattered energon cubes while they dealt with the fury of the Enigma’s effects.

He stood from the pilot’s seat, looking over the junk with his thumbs tucked into his waist. Whether appropriate or not, there was a feeling of nostalgia attached to an endeavor like this. He remembered his youth in med school, living in a tiny apartment he’d shared with two other students. Over the course of a semester, his cramped berthroom, a quarter the size he’d had on the _Lost Light_ , would become littered with class notes, bottles of engex, and used energon cubes, until after a month it would get to be too much and he would use a rare free afternoon to sweep it all out again. It had been a long time since he’d had a space that really felt like his own, and though a junky Decepticon shuttle came nowhere close, the feeling of getting ready to care for a space remained the same.

He couldn’t feel his memories filling the space between himself and Rodimus, but he was aware as Rodimus’ thoughts turned curious, some threads quieting as his attention was drawn inward. Rodimus, in turn, was becoming aware of Ratchet’s attention, and the dominant thought processes cycled between them, a soothing rhythm like waves within their shared headspace.

This was what Rodimus had meant when he’d said he couldn’t keep track of who was who and whether his thoughts were his own. In the moments after the Enigma had done whatever it had, both he and Ratchet had been in such a likeminded panic that it had taken him several minutes to be certain there were thoughts other than his own in his head, and even then acceptance had only come due to Ratchet’s insistence on the matter. Now, though, the effect was calming, and were they dealing with any processes more disciplined than active thought, they might have made it the whole journey on that alone.

As it was, though, the effect was short-lived. As soon as Rodimus started to think about it on too much of a meta level, he detached from the loop and once again found himself thinking about all the things that regularly haunted his awareness. His many tracks collided with and interrupted Ratchet’s few, pulling both out of the moment.

Ratchet coughed exhaust, breaking it with a sound of muted finality.

“Right,” he said. “You’ve still got decent knees, so you haul the shelving units back into place. I’ll get started sorting what’s salvageable from the junk; help me with that when you’re finished. We can start unloading trash tomorrow, once we’re further out from Fortuna’s gravity.”

One of them was aware that this wasn’t how the power dynamic normally worked, which then meant both were. That was okay. There was purpose to this task, Rodimus mused, as he settled his mind into the rhythm of lifting and pushing, sorting the room into a semblance of what it had been upon their arrival, with a twist. Shelves were repurposed to act as dividers between the command hub and the rest of the upper floor. He dragged a large case from the pile, and after checking there was nothing inside Ratchet would want (it was full of Cybertronian ammo) set it in the corner, surrounded by three chairs. He also went ahead and replaced the panel that had been hiding the Enigma of Combination, sealing its light in once more. Though it was impossible for him to forget its presence, hiding the physical object was a mild comfort.

The wall at the back of the command deck was recessed with a sliding door that did not immediately open when Rodimus approached it. The panel beside it, a straightforward text screen, requested an ident code he didn’t have. He thought about blasting the doors open. Ratchet’s mind rejected the idea faster than his mouth could.

“No, Rodimus. No,” he said, without looking up from the pile of energon cubes he was trying to salvage. He’d emptied the contents onto the floor and had sorted them into piles, the rationale of which Rodimus could feel as he developed them: intact cubes, dented cubes they would want to use first, and leaking cubes they would have to pool elsewhere. Ratchet used the categories as a framework for his thought process, methodically sorting by the restrictions he’d outline himself. It was different from how Rodimus would have approached such a task, but it seemed to be getting the job done.

“That’s probably where the recharge docks are,” he pointed out. “We’re going to want to get to them if we don’t want to be the crankiest pair in the galaxy by the time we get to Drift.”

The name caused a stir in Ratchet’s emotions, unexpected grief pulling through and tangling with Rodimus’ own messy feelings when it came to their journey’s objective.

“Then find a way to do it that doesn’t involve blasting both of us into space,” Ratchet said, his thoughts trying to piece together a conversation that wouldn’t require them to address the elephant in the room. The idea that came to his mind wasn’t the one Rodimus had expected.

“You know how to hack an ident code?” he asked, though he was thinking about a conversation he’d had with Drift once, when miscommunication had led to them being locked in the latter’s hab suite and debating whether it would be a better use of time to call for help or solve the problem themselves.

“I’m surprised you _don’t_ ,” Ratchet said, and he was thinking about his initial impressions of Drift after he’d joined the Autobots, assumptions he’d made that had taken years to untangle and make up for. “You’ve stolen ships before, haven’t you?”

“I’ve borrowed a couple from other Autobots,” Rodimus said. This wasn’t working. They were keeping their cool on the outside, but their headspace was lighting up again in a self-igniting chaos.

“Well, it’s a simple procedure. You…” Ratchet’s thoughts were agreeing with Rodimus, then laughing at himself for finding something they agreed on, then curling tight into a dense displeasure that Rodimus’ own emotions were eager to mimic. All it took was one conversation, a single bad idea, to send them spiraling again, and they’d only just started their journey. All the progress they had made, cleaning up their thoughts like they did the room, washed away as they tumbled back to the same place they’d been in when they started.

“Okay,” Ratchet said. _This isn’t working._

 _You could put me in stasis,_ Rodimus thought.

Ratchet’s thoughts said, _No,_ in big, purplish-red glyphs that was surrounded by all the reasons that was a bad idea: two crew members minimum in case of emergencies, chances of memory flux, unknown effects of the active Enigma, and more that Rodimus could feel and hear but didn’t have the energy to fully absorb.

“Get over here, Rodimus,” Ratchet said, gesturing to the empty floor on the other side of the piles he’d constructed. “We need to talk about this.” He meant Drift. In another situation, Rodimus would have faked ignorance to put off the conversation a little longer, but even as a joke he imagined it would fall flat here. Ratchet agreed.

Rodimus turned away from the door and sat across from Ratchet. He took a few of the unsorted cubes for himself and tried to organize them the way Ratchet had. The intact cubes were easy, but it became a challenge when they started to show evidence of the abuse they’d taken, loose in the crate. How was Ratchet able to categorize them so quickly? Even having been privy to the thought process, Rodimus struggled to follow it himself.

Ratchet’s thoughts were more settled than his own. Their rhythm had broken because Rodimus mentioned Drift, so, they needed to talk about Drift.

But where did he start? They knew the circumstances that had led them here. They knew it was Rodimus’ failure and Ratchet’s resolve that had warranted this trip. They knew they both missed Drift: his energy, his presence, the way he’d fit into their lives with the unexpected grace that defined the way he moved through the universe. They knew that Ratchet had looked into Drift’s eyes as he prepared to board that shuttle, and realized he was losing something irreplaceable. They knew, because Ratchet knew, and those thoughts bled into Rodimus’ own until they became his, until the ache that had already existed in his spark was validated and encouraged by its twin feeling in Ratchet’s. Rodimus stared at the cube in his hands, grounding himself with the visual to keep from being sucked entirely into the loop.

“I’m sorry,” he said.

He hadn’t expected his apology to be rejected.

“It’s not _me_ you need to apologize to,” Ratchet said, filling their space with something just shy of his own apology, a feeling like sympathy. “This isn’t about me or my feelings. This is about Drift.”

But when he said ‘this,’ his thoughts turned into a nebulous cloud that was unlike the steady progression of observations Rodimus had gotten used to.

“Do you mean _this_ ,” the ship, the quest, “or _this_ ,” the conversation, the breakdown. Rodimus believed it could only be true for one.

Ratchet’s mind latched onto the image of the ship but morphed it into the little shuttle Arcee had stolen away on. His intention hadn’t been to leave for his own gain. It was supposed to be about Drift, and doing what was right, giving back the home that had been taken away from him.

Rodimus’ thoughts interjected—Drift had volunteered to leave, Rodimus hadn’t ordered it. Ratchet accepted the amendment but found it inconsequential. Rodimus could have ordered him to stay. He could have made it a point to find Drift after the truth came out. His choices meant that Drift was still alone, and that was the inherent injustice of the situation.

That Ratchet missed him was part of the equation, but not his central reason for embarking on it. In a similar vein, Ratchet wasn’t the one who had been wronged by Rodimus’ failure to act. He would have preferred not to have to leave his work and friends to do what had to be done, but he neither wanted nor expected Rodimus’ apology for that lost time. Ultimately, it was Ratchet’s decision to have come out here, and though these were not the circumstances he had expected it to be under, he still planned to follow through on his original intentions.

“Are you going to tell him this was your idea?” Rodimus asked.

“That’s a conversation _you_ need to have,” Ratchet said, his thoughts answering the question that Rodimus hadn’t been able to voice aloud. He would not lie to Drift. He wouldn’t claim that Rodimus had intended to join him or been involved in the planning. Rodimus needed to own his mistakes and face the fears that had so far prevented him from acting.

Rodimus’ frame flinched as he saw the reflection of his anxieties in Ratchet’s mind: that Drift would hate him for what he’d done and refuse to forgive him, that he would go seeking a return to something that, in reality, he could never have again. In the theater of their minds, those possibilities grew, became realities, made worse because he knew Ratchet was experiencing them at the same time and could _see_ the fears that Rodimus had let define him.

The thoughts snapped short, Ratchet’s mind filling with a static blankness that Rodimus’ own feelings tripped over. Without the feedback of another mind, his anxiety lost its momentum, and he found himself in an uncomfortable place of nervousness without source.

“Old trick I picked up for entering recharge,” Ratchet said. “If there are too many thoughts, think of static. Doesn’t work very long, but it can interrupt some processes, reset things.” His voice was gentle, and though the effect was offset by the clinical precision with which his processor chose his words, Rodimus found he appreciated it. “You’ve been scared of what Drift would do. You still are. Why did you agree to come find him?”

“Don’t have another choice,” Rodimus said. “Drift’s our best chance to fix this.”

“And that adds to the guilt, then the fear.”

_Yeah._

“Have you ever—”

“No,” Rodimus said, not realizing he’d interrupted. “Haven’t really had time. And it’s not a big problem. The other people who go to Rung have it worse.” Their faces floated through his mind, the things that had been done to them. Everything that had gone wrong in his life had been because of choices he made. A psychiatrist couldn’t fix a predisposition to making mistakes.

“It stopped you from going to get Drift.”

“That was my decision, though.” Rodimus tapped the Autobrand on his chassis. “I’m an Autobot. I’ve been a Wrecker. I can handle being scared and toughing through it, and this time, I chose not to. That’s on me.”

“Okay.”

Of all things, Rodimus felt disappointed that was the end of the interrogation, a ripe emotion that Ratchet picked up on.

“What do you want me to do?” he asked. “Slap you with a diagnosis for processor malfunction and tell you it wasn’t your fault? You’re _right_ , Rodimus. Regardless of wherever that fear comes from, it was _your decision_ not to do anything. You let it, and _Drift_ , fester under your inaction.” He held out a hand. “Give me that.”

Rodimus looked down and realize he was still holding the first energon cube he’d picked up, never sorted. He handed it over and Ratchet placed it in the middle pile.

“But you’re getting another chance,” he went on. “You didn’t earn it, but you’re getting one anyway. And if you really want to apologize, you’ll take everything you’ve learned from your mistakes and use it to make the right choices this time.”

Ratchet’s thoughts were rough, the clicking of interconnected gears pulsing a regularity that allowed Rodimus’ processor to settle and mimic his confidence. It reminded him of Drift, the way he would talk to distract, and the comparison caused a quick flash of embarrassment on Ratchet’s end.

“I’ll help you,” he said. “You’re so scared of being alone, so I’ll tell you right now you won’t be.”

Rodimus’ eyes widened.

“Really? You would do that for me?”

“Not for you,” Ratchet said. “For Drift. Regardless of how I feel, you’re his best friend, and he deserves to have that back.” His mouth tightened at Rodimus’ disbelief. “Alright, it’s more complicated than that, but I know he thought the world of you before you sent him away. My hope is he won’t still idolize you. I think you were good for each other, but this is your opportunity to be better.”

“Okay.”

“You’re still afraid.”

He was, because being told to do better was always the trigger that caused him to fail people even harder. Once someone thought he was capable of more, that set up the possibility to prove them wrong, and his processor’s fear of doing so turned it into a self-fulfilling prophecy.

“I’ll _be there_ ,” Ratchet insisted. “I won’t let you do that to him.”

“Okay,” Rodimus repeated. He picked up another energon cube, this one buckled but only minorly cracked. “Thanks, Ratchet.”

Ratchet’s thoughts didn’t want his thanks, but his silence accepted it. Rodimus placed the cube between two piles.

Their conversation didn’t fix the problems created by sharing a headspace, but it helped. Ratchet felt like he was better able to adapt to the ebb and flow of Rodimus’ emotions, like predicting the tide. It still frequently caught him off-guard, but he was figuring out how to handle it, and Rodimus was learning tricks to calm himself down for Ratchet’s sake. The blats of static in his head were alarming and uncomfortable, but he could appreciate them as signs Rodimus was trying.

After they finished sorting the energon cubes and dumping the broken ones into an emptied weapons case, they went for the back half of the ship. Ratchet did know how to forge an ident code, but in searching the systems found that it would be simpler to crack the lock and brute force it the rest of the way. Rodimus tried to show off, pulling against the door with all the power his racing alt could provide, and refused to give up until Ratchet worried he’d pop something and stepped in to help. Even as he grumbled about this being terrible for his back, there was a good humor in it that he didn’t normally associate with his interactions with Rodimus. It was strange and a little worrisome, considering the possibility they were operating under unknown effects from the Enigma, but they’d dealt with enough heavy scrap already. They didn’t talk about it.

The opening revealed a cramped hallway. Because the door hadn’t been opened by its own mechanisms, nothing sent a command to the lights to turn on, so they stepped into darkness. They were still able to make out four doors, two on each side, which led to three berth rooms with two recharge docks apiece and a single washrack. The rooms didn’t contain any personal mementos to hint at who had stayed there, leading them to assume this vessel hadn’t been designed with long-term habitation in mind. Walking back up the narrow hall, Ratchet tried to imagine a Decepticon heavy hitter walking this way to get to work, day after day. None that came to mind would have put up with it for more than a week.

Fuel and energy levels running low, they each retrieved a cube from the surviving stash and retired to the dining area Rodimus had dragged together. Ratchet glanced at the third chair, an empty space between them. Despite himself, he found he liked its presence, so he didn’t say anything. They sipped their fuel in silence, and Ratchet found his thoughts turning to the hex set he’d left on the shuttle, the opened bottles of average quality engex. Nothing irreplaceable, but good for their job of passing time on long voyages. Rodimus’ tickling amusement distracted him before he got too far into his longing.

“What?” he asked over the rim of his energon.

Rodimus shrugged, quirky little grin on his face.

“Looks like you had a nice little vacation planned.”

Ratchet rolled his eyes.

“You’ve seen what Drift is like when he’s cooped up for too long. Damn processor needs constant stimulation or he’s driving up the walls.” He’d kept his tone and air the same he always did when people needled him about his odd friendship, aloof and a touch patronizing, what they expected. The act had come so naturally that he’d forgotten Rodimus had a view behind the constructed demeanor, and the grin grew.

“Uh-huh, bet you were really dreading being his only source of attention.”

“You’re mixing yourself up with other people again, Rodimus.”

“Did I say attention? Maybe _stimulation_ ’s the word.”

Rodimus was as amused by himself as Ratchet always suspected he would be, though his own expression and the lengthening silence weren’t helping.

“I am amusing, aren’t I?” Rodimus said, tilting his helm back to drain his cube. Ratchet’s gaze caught on the sleek tubing of his neck, which is how he would later justify what came out of his mouth next.

“I’m sure Drift thought so.”

The image was unintentional, disconnected, and completely deserved. Up into Rodimus’ pretty head popped the thought—first person view, Drift pinned underneath, eyes squeezed tight and mouth open in ecstasy—and Ratchet choked on his energon.

“Static, _static_ ,” he demanded as Rodimus’ thoughts turned to fuzz.

His processor was too scrambled to catch all of it behind the static wall, a rogue thread left looping, _Oh god, I’m so sorry, frag, bad, accident, sorry Ratch, shit!_ His optics, before sparkling with mirth, now flickered in embarrassment.

Ratchet stared. Again, he was reminded of that tiny apartment, walking in to find one of his roommates swapping fuel with someone from engineering. Everyone would be equally embarrassed and guilty, and no one would look each other in the eyes for a few days because they were supposed to be adults and know better. It didn’t matter that he couldn’t tell whether the image had been memory or fantasy. In fact, that probably added to the hilarity of the comparison, and he found himself laughing. Rodimus eased, allowing himself to drop the static as his grin returned.

“It was going to happen,” Ratchet said. “For all the rumors, I’m surprised it wasn’t sooner.”

Another flash of Drift, a blast of static. No embarrassment this time, just a sense of respect for Ratchet’s boundaries. Ratchet’s appreciation must have gotten through, because Rodimus’ grin softened into something more fond than lascivious.

“Now that I’ve started thinking it, I’m going to need some distraction if we want it to stop,” Rodimus said. “How about we put a plug in this conversation?”

Oops, Ratchet’s turn. An old colleague from Iacon Medical, not someone Rodimus would have known, but he filled it in with static anyway.

“You did that on purpose,” he accused.

Rodimus shrugged. He had.

“Sorry,” he said, and meant it. “So, we’re both running low. How about you go back and recharge a bit? I can keep an eye out here.”

Normally Ratchet would have insisted that he take the first watch, but this far out from Fortuna, no emergencies they could run into would be any less likely a few hours later. His chronometer indicated he was now past his normal recharge schedule, and his frame was ready to ease off for a bit. Whether his spark would let him was another story, but that was a problem they would have to address sooner or later. He finished his cube and set it on their makeshift table. There had to be a container or recycler somewhere on board, but he left it for now, intending to go looking after he’d had a chance to shut down for a bit.

“Maybe it’s downstairs?” Rodimus suggested.

Seemed most likely.

“Not a big fan of either of us snooping down there while the other’s out, though,” Ratchet said. “Main thing we saw down there was weapons. Human-made, but those can still pack a punch if they’re used right. Or set off accidentally.”

“Yeah, I get it,” Rodimus said, leaning back in his chair. “I’ll wait for my spotter.”

Ratchet nodded.

“Good.”

He left Rodimus in the main room, slipping through the half-open door and into the dark and tiny hallway. The door to the washrack was motion-activated, not code-locked, which meant the light came on when he stepped inside. As it shut behind him, it struck Ratchet that this was the furthest he’d been from Rodimus since they’d uncovered the Enigma.

_Miss me already?_

Ratchet snorted.

 _Can’t wait to rinse you off me,_ he thought back. _Now shoo. Don’t need the commentary while I’m showering._ Obviously, Rodimus couldn’t turn off the sharing, but he could make his thoughts less pointed, pulled into the usual loops and tangles he had them in. There was a bit about the _Lost Light_ ’s recent progress that had most of his attention, and Ratchet let it serve as ambient noise as he turned on the solvent spray and started rinsing himself down. The solvent only came in room temperature, it turned out, and the single option for detergent was almost empty, but he made the most of the wash while trying not to think too hard about what he was doing. Some things still got through, but Rodimus’ reactions were mild, respectful of the boundaries they were setting.

Unintentionally, Ratchet’s mind wandered to that grateful, small smile he’d seen the other robot wear. They were both trying not to make this hellish for each other. Whatever efforts were made toward that end, however slight, were appreciated.

 _No problem, Ratch,_ Rodimus thought, followed by mild embarrassment. Either he hadn’t wanted Ratchet to know he was listening in, or they were edging too close to honest again.

Ratchet shut off the spray and let the automatic air dryers blast him. Not as pleasant or thorough as a towel, but it would keep him from making a puddle on the berth.

 _I’m headed to the berths now,_ he thought. In this mind, he saw that Rodimus had found a chest of scrap parts and junk that he planned to sort through to keep himself busy. _Don’t throw anything out until I’ve had a chance to look at it._ _I’m good at improvising with junk._ He thought momentarily of the repair kit he’d so lovingly fashioned on the old shuttle, state-of-the-art technology compartmentalized and optimized for rapid repairs. The Decepticons had to have something similar on board, though he doubted anything on this rig would be to the same standard as what had been taken.

 _You made it through the war with worse,_ Rodimus pointed out.

 _I know,_ Ratchet thought as he stepped into one of the berthrooms. Also code-locked, the lights in this room would remain off, though a pair of porthole windows let him look out toward the stars. _I just thought the time for that was over._

Rodimus’ response was wordless, a mixture of grief and hope that fit well within all that Ratchet was learning about the once-Prime. He sat on the berth and uncoiled the recharge cable, clamping it to his chassis and letting the ship calibrate to his frame’s specifications. Once he’d put in his own settings for the recharge program, the coding was sent to his processor, initiating temporary shutdown.

“Goodnight, Ratchet!” Rodimus shouted from the main room.

 _Goodnight,_ he thought, and drifted away.

To Rodimus, it wasn’t a fading of thought so much as a change in rhythm. Words drifted to the back of Ratchet’s processor, while feelings and images pulled forward, like blinking impressions of his day. Rodimus saw a lot of himself, but he wasn’t alone: the _Lost Light_ , its crew, (the hearing), the Enigma, Arcee, and the stolen shuttle swirled and skirted around each other, occasionally overlapping in fantastical ways.

Drift was also there, no more distant despite his displacement from the rest of Ratchet’s attentions. Rodimus knew his best friend’s face well, but it was different to see him through someone else’s eyes. Every time he appeared, Rodimus would be drawn inward, away from the task he’d dealt himself, and gradually the impression of Drift started to fill out. The Drift Ratchet saw was frustrating, Rodimus could feel that right away, but with an easy comradery that he could also relate to. This Drift was a fighter with both sword and spark, but the strength with which he held himself up was just barely sufficient for the weight of the world over him. Unlike Rodimus’ Drift, Ratchet’s Drift would not be fine on his own indefinitely. He needed help.

_Too loud, Rodimus._

_Ah, sorry._

He pulled his attention back to sorting, trying to lull himself into the monotony. He’d started by pulling everything out of the crate that looked like it worked and forming a pile out of that, but everything showed some evidence of use or damage. The nonfunctional machines he pulled out had similar patterns of damage, just more severe. Fraying wires became split, dents turned to chinks in outer shells. The pile of working tools became the center point of a web, from which extended family trees of damage, lineages showing machine’s expanding capacities to break. The only things that struggling to find their place among the rest were the loose scraps that remained at the bottom of the box after all the intact pieces had been pulled out. Assuming they were parts that had broken off, Rodimus did his best to align them with what he thought they’d come from, then dumped the rest in its own pile. Ratchet would know what to make of it when he arose.

The rhythm of Ratchet’s thoughts continued through the rest of the recharge cycle until it was broken by the dock bringing him back online. His mind lit up with confusion as Rodimus’ own swept in to greet him, before the memories of the last day settled and he reached out with a friendly, wordless feeling.

 _How was it?_ Rodimus asked.

Like a normal recharge cycle, but busier. Ratchet’s processor had been able to rest, but his spark had still been aware of Rodimus’ presence and tried to integrate it into its normal function. The sensation was one that didn’t translate well to words, and even able to feel the memory, Rodimus doubted his understanding was wholly accurate to Ratchet’s experience.

“You’ll get it soon enough,” Ratchet said as he stepped back into the main room. He stopped just short of tripping over Rodimus’ web of components.

“Right, so, I know what it looks like,” Rodimus said, “but I actually did sort them. You start from the middle, here—”

Ratchet’s processor filled in the rest of his impending explanation, to both their surprise.

“I think my spark absorbed your methods as you were coming up with them,” Ratchet said, optics moving along the branches in the same pattern Rodimus had constructed them. “Not how I would have done it, but I understand it.” His own processor was playing with the various parts, weighing broken segments against each other to see how things might be mended. It was taking Rodimus’ thinking and building on it. “Thanks.”

After Rodimus emerged from recharge, they ventured down to the hull. Racks of weapons greeted them as they descended and they had to walk between crates of explosives and armor-piercing guns in their search for basic necessities.

“Kinda wish Brainstorm were here,” Rodimus mused as he walked by a stack of machine guns. He imagined their weapons engineer verbally picking apart the whole arsenal, critiquing function and aesthetic, pointing out the places human engineers could have made their designs deadlier.

Ratchet was pulling open drawers in a large cabinet, hoping one would yield medical supplies. Or, his mind added with a humorous nudge, Brainstorm would have been so disgusted by the lot that he would recommend it all get thrown out to space.

“Just give it all up and start over,” Rodimus said from out of view, his voice a low tier impression of Brainstorm’s. “Hey, I thought that was pretty good.”

“Needs workshopping,” Ratchet said, though his mind was wandering. How quickly they could go from discovering one of their own was a Decepticon to joking about him joining them on a Decepticon shuttle, surrounded by weaponry. Was it a sign that attitudes toward faction were changing, or the culture of the _Lost Light_ specifically and how they processed surprising revelations?

Rodimus’ mind pulsed with curiosity, the image of Drift sprouting between them.

“Sorry,” he said.

“It’s okay,” Ratchet said. He opened another drawer and spied a smaller box near the back. “He’s very present.”

“He’s spooky like that,” Rodimus agreed, his mind drawing to the memory of their last conversation prior to recharge. The curiosity lingered, but Ratchet found that its presence quirked his own.

“I’m going to regret asking this,” he said, “but did you really…” The image came back, a flimsy recreation cobbled together by his own memory. There was a clatter of something falling and a curse, and Ratchet felt Rodimus’ thrill of panic before he realized it hadn’t been his own processor bringing it up this time. Ratchet tried to focus on opening the box and keeping his emotions steady.

“You really want to know?” Rodimus asked. His emotions were a spiral of embarrassment and confusion, but Ratchet had only a moment to feel guilty before a burst of static smothered them. “No, it’s okay, I don’t mind. I just don’t understand why it matters.”

Ratchet didn’t have an answer for that, except his spark was saying it did, it mattered a lot. He got the box open and eyed the contents: a few vials of powdered metals, none immediately identifiable.

“Hey.”

Ratchet jumped, Rodimus having appeared at his side. He fumbled with the box, just managing to keep himself from dropping it and shattering the delicate glass. Rodimus put a hand on his shoulder, though he only became aware of it when Ratchet noticed and pulled it back.

“Sorry,” he said. “I just thought… I don’t mind talking about this, but I think we should know why we’re having this conversation before we start it.” He was keeping his thoughts remarkably disciplined. Ratchet found himself now in the position of being the less organized of the two. He looked down at his scavengings and plucked a single vial from the box, playing with it by turning it between his fingers.

“It’s not from a place of judgement,” Ratchet said. His upbringing amid stringent Functionism had resulted in hard-wired responses to some subjects, and though he’d learned better, some unsavory rhetoric still got through. Luckily, Rodimus didn’t seem bothered by it.

“Didn’t think so,” he said. He took the box from Ratchet’s loose hand and peered inside, digging through the vials with a single digit before he shut the lid and put it away. “So, Drift?”

“Him.” Ratchet wasn’t sure who was producing the images they held in their minds, Drift’s back as he walked toward his shuttle. He wondered if it might be a conglomeration of their thoughts.

“We do spend a lot of time thinking about him,” Rodimus said. “And like, I know you have the whole noble thing you’re doing, bringing Drift back because it’s the right thing to do. But I guess I’m wondering if that’s the only reason you’re doing it?”

Ratchet opened another drawer, watching his hands as they sorted through the contents.

“I’m fond of him,” he admitted. He hadn’t been paying attention, the moment when he started to consider Drift a friend, but the feeling was thick and persistent in his mind. Much as he wanted to do right by Drift, there was a selfish part of him that was also looking forward to having him back, to being part of Drift’s life again. He hadn’t realized how much that meant to him until it was abruptly cut short.

“Same,” Rodimus said. Fond, as in appreciative. As in enjoying Drift’s smile, the way he laughed without showing it, his appreciation for minute details. Fond, as in looking forward to seeing Drift in the morning, racing with him in the afternoon. On his days off, Rodimus would look forward to catching up with Drift on any and every bit of gossip they’d heard around the ship, and at night they would go seeking new ways to cause trouble, just the two of them. Trouble to mean almost drowning in the oil well, getting locked on the outside of the ship, and yes, sometimes just fragging each other in places they weren’t supposed to.

Ratchet wasn’t surprised. Even before hearing the rumors, he’d seen the way Drift and Rodimus acted around each other. Two robots that young, that good looking, with too much free time? It wasn’t a big leap.

Rodimus winked at him. Ratchet rolled his eyes.

“So, I guess that answers your question,” Rodimus said, but his own was still open.

Ratchet’s fingers slipped across something smooth. He pulled it out: a flat piece of green-tinted metal, razor-sharp on one side. A shard of a broken blade, probably a knife. He hadn’t answered Rodimus’ question he’d been avoiding it himself. As long as he didn’t address his reasons for going to find Drift, he could tell himself that the cause was noble at heart, and there would be no room for disappointment at its resolution if things went back to the way they had been.

Because Drift deserved to be happy. It was such a natural progression of ideas that it took Ratchet a moment to realize he hadn’t been the one to think it. He looked over at Rodimus, who once more wore that complex expression, a mask for the mixture of emotions he felt when thinking about Drift. Their thoughts mingled and bridged, all the things they appreciated and missed about him swimming together in a pool of sweet melancholy. The realization hit them simultaneously, though Ratchet was the first to react, the broken shard hitting the floor with a _clink_.

“You’re—” _in love with him._

“So are you.”

They stared at each other.

Rodimus cracked a grin. The laugh snuck up on Ratchet.

“We are _dense_ ,” he said, feeling Rodimus’ humor wash over him.

“Speak for yourself,” he said, standing straight in a mockery of his own pride. “I’ve known for a while.”

“So, ‘best friend’ was code for ‘frag buddy I got too close to’?” Ratchet shook his head. “You young bots. _I_ could’ve warned you where that was going.”

“Well, what’s your excuse?” Rodimus asked. “If you’ve got so much grim experience, what stopped you from getting those feelings under control?”

Drift did. Rodimus’ grin softened, and he nodded.

They stared at each other. It struck Ratchet that if the circumstances had been any different, they should have hated each other, or at least been uncomfortable with the trajectory of their mission. But his belief that the other robot was better for Drift was reflected, so that in their shared fears for the coming encounter, there was an inherent solidarity. Even still, they could have forged a rivalry out of that, dug in deep to protect themselves from the coming hurt, but over the last day Ratchet had lost his ability to see Rodimus that way. He wasn’t a perfect person, but he was trying.

“You should be my wing-mech,” Rodimus joked. He leaned down and picked up the shard Ratchet had dropped, turning it a couple times to see how it reflected the light before he tossed it back in the drawer. “Hey, I know we haven’t found what we came looking for, but how would you feel about grabbing some fuel?”

Ratchet could be amenable to that idea. He shut the drawer full of junk and led the way back to the ladder. On the upper level, he retrieved two of the less full cubes and offered one to Rodimus before holding out his own. They tapped together. Cheers.

“I never hated you,” Ratchet said while Rodimus took a drink. He’d done his best to ignore it when Rodimus’ panicked thoughts had betrayed that insecurity, but in the wake of this revelation he assumed it would be better to come clean. He’d resented Rodimus for the choices that he’d made, but now that they were in this together, it was probably time to let things go.

Rodimus smiled, though he directed it down to the cube in his hands.

“I would’ve deserved it, if you had.”

Mentally, Ratchet waved him off, uninterested in that argument. It wouldn’t change anything.

They took their fuel and returned to the cargo hold, thoughts wrapped up in cleaning and Drift, but also each other.

There was no such thing as a short journey to the outer rim, and even with their budding comradery and a ship full of nonsense to explore, sort, and make sense of, time started to drag. There were only so many critiques to be made of Decepticon organization methods. Rodimus missed driving, Ratchet missed his work in the med bay, and both missed the friends they’d had to leave on such short notice. They fought from time to time, when emotions from one would spill into the other and no amount of space could truly separate them, but they always made up afterward. There was no other choice. Despite the necessity of their apologies and commitments to finding solutions, they did find themselves in the inevitable consequence of growing closer, their thoughts interweaving more with each new understanding they came to. They passed a whole recharge cycle (days had lost meaning) without speaking a word out loud to each other, though that was due to working in separate areas of the ship. In each other’s company, they kept a habit of keeping the main line of conversation vocal.

The only time they were anything approaching alone was when one powered down for recharge. The other would be left to their tasks, several hours in which their constant companion dwarfed into a background hum. They looked forward to these moments for different, yet complementary reasons. Ratchet enjoyed the serenity of the illusory isolation. His first observation of Rodimus’ thought patterns were how bright they were, and that light had not dimmed even under extended observation, except for those few blissful hours he spent powered down. For Rodimus, it was an opportunity to fantasize. Not too in-depth, as hard thinking woke Ratchet up, but lighthearted thoughts about what their meeting with Drift might be like. He enjoyed the scenarios he came up with when he wasn’t thinking too hard about it: excited greetings, warm smiles, a return to normalcy. For Ratchet’s sake, he could put his fears aside for a few hours and imagine a future in which he was happy.

Now, though, a day out from Scarvix, that peace wasn’t coming so easily. Though he tried, Rodimus could not stop his thoughts from wandering to the worst possibilities, all the ways their impending reunion could go wrong. Though he tried to quiet himself and reign in his racing processor, it was too much for Ratchet’s recharge protocols to ignore. He came to, confusion weighed down by a half-awake processor.

 _What’s wrong?_ The words fluttered.

 _Nothing,_ Rodimus thought. _I’ll try to calm it down._

 _No, don’t worry, I’m already awake._ Rodimus heard movement back in the berthrooms, followed by footsteps. Rodimus turned from where he’d been sitting in the co-pilot’s chair. The space between the rearranged shelves came a perfect view back to the hallway, where Ratchet was just stepping into the light.

“Drift?” Ratchet asked.

Rodimus nodded and let loose some of the fears he’d been playing with while Ratchet recharged. Ratchet accepted them with the same grace he always did, keeping his thoughts clear and calm as he walked forward to sit in the pilot’s chair. Sat beside each other, bodies angled together, Rodimus was able to look into Ratchet’s eyes while they talked. He always preferred it this way; despite their view into each other’s minds, it felt more honest when they could talk face to face. Ratchet agreed.

“I’ve already made my promises to you,” he said. “I will do what I can to keep you from making a complete aft of yourself. You just need to do your best and accept there’s a chance he’ll still reject us, even then.”

Rodimus wasn’t sure why, but the wording made him grin.

“We’re not a package deal, Ratchet,” he pointed out. “You’re alright.”

“The way we are now, we’re as close as it gets,” Ratchet countered. Neither of them doubted Drift would help them, if he could, but they still planned to give him the option to say no. It was no secret that they hoped he wouldn’t take it. Though they found balance, they couldn’t live like this forever.

“After we separate…” Rodimus glanced down at his hands, flexing the joints. He knew it wouldn’t be like this again, nor did he want it to, but he liked Ratchet’s companionship. He didn’t want to lose it as soon as this trip was over.

Ratchet reached forward and tilted Rodimus’ chin back up. Their eyes met again.

“I’ll still be there for you, Rodimus.” _Promise._

Ratchet’s touch ignited an idea in Rodimus’ mind, and he both felt and saw the moment Ratchet noticed it, his optics flaring as it passed through his processor, different programs weighing the image’s merits. Worried he would find it lacking, Rodimus starting to withdraw, but a firm thought from Ratchet and a thumb stroking along his jaw reeled him back in.

Ratchet sent the idea back. He nodded. Nervousness, shivery like the little smile he wore, bubbled up in his spark.

Not wanting to make him sit with that feeling, Rodimus made it quick: he leaned forward and kissed him.

Like the texture of his thoughts, the feeling of kissing Ratchet wasn’t what he would have expected, if he’d given it any thought before this. Warm lips and a tricky glossa came out to meet him, bidding Rodimus draw nearer. He lost track of his thoughts as Ratchet’s hand came up to the nape of his neck, fingers brushing the delicate seam, and he leaned across the space between them, one hand on Ratchet’s shoulder to steady himself. He sunk in further to the kiss, feeling Ratchet out, relishing the press and flex of glossa as they learned each other’s touch.

Rodimus pulled back, the wordless conversation zinging between them. He could see Ratchet’s ideas, and they delighted him. He nodded, once, then maneuvered himself so he was straddling Ratchet’s lap. One hand gripped his aft, and another wrapped around the small of his back. Though he wanted more of that kiss, he had to take a moment to gaze down, disbelief and excitement coiling within their minds. Had either of them thought of this before now, Rodimus was certain they would have acted on it, but somehow the possibility had eluded them until this, the final hour. Not wanting to waste another moment, he ducked his head again, soaking up the feeling of Ratchet’s lips against his own.

Ratchet’s fingers traced the plating over his spinal strut, ravishing each panel and the seams between them with firm, concentrated strokes. Under each swipe, new heat bloomed in Rodimus’ internals, loosening his mechanisms as he sank further into Ratchet’s lap. He arched his back to meet those hands, trying to press more out of the stimulation, but Ratchet pulled him back in, flush chest to chest. Rodimus pulled an arm free and used it to tilt Ratchet’s head, angling him so they could deepen their kiss without interrupting the teasing ministrations.

He shouldn’t have been so surprised by how good Ratchet would be with his hands, but once they were on Rodimus’ frame he never wanted them anywhere else. Each caress elicited new waves of warmth that tingled through his plating, and he tried to recreate the feeling in his mind, drawing out the picture so Ratchet could feel what his touch was doing to Rodimus.

The tingling exploded into excitement as blunt fingers brushed his interface port cover. With a _click_ , the lock disengaged and the flap swung open, landing in Ratchet’s open palm. Rodimus felt Ratchet’s satisfaction and amusement ripple through their thoughts. Not to be outdone, Rodimus dropped his free hand to Ratchet’s windshield and tapped twice on the glass, the vibrations pulling a hum out of the medic that Rodimus swallowed up eagerly.

Ratchet’s hand released his port cover and bore down, and Rodimus gasped as a finger traced around the rim of his port. Crackling heat emanated from the point of contact. Ratchet felt it, too, his sensitive fingers seizing against the energy output. Rodimus broke away to press soothing kisses down his neck, inhaling deep as he nestled against the delicate energon lines. Ratchet squeezed his aft and he pressed back into the touch, playfully revving his engine.

Not done, Rodimus pulled back again and stuck two fingers in his mouth, coating them with oral lubricants while Ratchet watched. He took a moment to savor the attention, the way Ratchet was pulled away from the sting of his hand, before pulling them out with a _pop_. He went for the windshield again, streaking his sleek fingers across the smooth expanse before sinking the tips into the delicate seams between glass and metal. Even without the mental link, Ratchet’s full-frame shudder told Rodimus he’d done well.

A stuttering, half-formed thought from Ratchet and they were kissing again, pressing and sliding against each other as Ratchet got his hand under control and released his interface cable into his hand. Careful not to shock himself again, he maneuvered the plug until the tip aligned with the rim of Rodimus’ port.

 _Please,_ he begged, optics screwed tight, pressing into the kiss. He tried to shift up onto Ratchet’s plug, but the hold on his aft was firm.

_Speedsters. No patience._

Rodimus worked his fingers down Ratchet’s windshield, feeling his charge amp up until it seemed to jump on its own from cable to port, and still Ratchet didn’t move, devilish amusement sneaking in under the cloud of lust. So, Rodimus did what he had to do: he bit down on Ratchet’s lip. Ratchet jumped, the movement just enough to slot them together.

 _Intense._ Rodimus shouted, head flung back as his optics blinked to black. The sensory information was _so much_. He could feel his own thoughts projecting through Ratchet and back again, bursting through him like electricity along a wire. Like aiming one mirror at another, the space of their minds was stretched to infinity, echoes overlapping and reinventing until the world was a blur of _him_ and _Ratchet_ and _both_. The place he and Ratchet connected heated until it burned, a wonderful ache that scorched his internals with a crackling whip.

“R—Ratchet!”

“Frag, Rodimus!”

Panting, they tried to recapture one another’s lips, but their movements turned sloppy and uncoordinated as the feedback loop overwhelmed their sensory suites. The strength of Ratchet’s grip was all that kept Rodimus upright as he rocketed into overload, losing awareness to the beating echo of pleasure through his systems. It was so much, so fast, and falling out of it was like slamming into a wall. He collapsed against Ratchet’s chest, strutless, just lucid enough to feel Ratchet unplug his cable and hold him close.

“You okay?” Ratchet asked.

He was so good. Amazing. Indescribable. Angry at himself for not realizing they could have been doing that the entire time.

Ratchet didn’t think they would have put up with each other long enough at the outset of their journey, which Rodimus could concede. The pleasant warmth coming off Ratchet, both physical and emotional, gave him something to curl up against as his systems reset.

“Give me a word?”

“Good,” Rodimus mumbled against Ratchet’s neck. He wanted to go again.

“After we’ve had some time to rest,” Ratchet said, words underscored with the genuine concern in his mind.

There were other feelings in there, too, more complex as Rodimus looked further into them. Ratchet wanted to do that again, many times, but he was also aware that they were just a day out from finding Drift, the person they both had feelings for. And not just the quick sensory feelings that had brought them together like this, but readiness for a commitment that neither of them had a right to. They’d run into this too fast, the Enigma’s positive feedback loop making it impossible to think about whether it would be a good idea.

Rodimus’ contended smile shifted to a frown.

“Hey, I liked it,” Ratchet said, lifting Rodimus’ head so they could see each other. “I don’t regret it. I’m just worried we will later, when we’re trying to figure out where we all stand with each other and this is hanging over us.”

“You think too much,” Rodimus mumbled, leaning forward again so he could tuck his face into Ratchet’s shoulder.

“You’re probably right,” Ratchet conceded, stroking gentle fingers down Rodimus’ neck. Not a sensual touch, just soothing. Rodimus relaxed into the embrace, ignoring his processor’s anxiety over what the coming day would bring.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I was working on the last chapter of this fic last night and found that I was very displeased with the way the pacing and character arcs had worked out. I rushed myself to finish this in time for Ratchet Week and ended up with something I'm not very proud of, despite still being drawn to the original concept. So, I'm going to rework the beginning and post the end once I'm more satisfied with it. Thank you for your patience!
> 
> EDIT 1/29/21: OOF this took longer than it was supposed to but the new version is up! Check out [Fault Lines Under the Living Room](https://archiveofourown.org/works/29065248/chapters/71343438) for the rest of the story :)


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